Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced the ballot numbers for the 5 initiatives on the June primary ballot. They’re listed below, along with my own initial take (and those are my own – neither Calitics nor the Courage Campaign has taken a position on these yet):
Prop 13: Exempts seismic retrofits from property taxes. Unsure about this one – might be a good incentive to get older buildings reinforced.
Prop 14: The top-two primary. Definitely voting no on this one.
Prop 15: The California Fair Elections Act, creating public financing for Secretary of State elections in 2014 and 2018. A big ol’ hell yes to this one.
Prop 16: PG&E’s effort to make it harder to create public power districts by requiring a 2/3rds vote. Definitely voting no on this one.
Prop 17: Mercury Insurance’s effort to gut the Prop 103 consumer protections. Definitely voting no on this one as well. See Naomi Seligman’s post for more on this initiative.
You’ll be hearing a LOT more about these initiatives over the next four months. And it’s still not clear what will be on the much longer November ballot – but we can expect those initiatives to be some of the most important decisions voters have made at the ballot in some time.
It’s not like progressives have been overly focused on initiatives lately. They haven’t. AFAIK, no one is looking for people to even table on these things at a local level.
That’s pathetic.
In the Bay Area, a lot of Progressives have gotten behind the grassroots effort for removing the 2/3rds majority rule.
There has also been some activity on the issue of a constitutional convention.
Not to quibble, but there is an important difference. Props 16 and 17 are initiatives, qualified for the ballot by signatures of registered voters (though they were deceived by paid signature gatherers) while the others were put on by the votes of the Legislators. In this case the only two good ones came from the Lege. Definitely Yes on 15, probably Yes on 13 and No NO NO! to Maldo, PG&E and Mercury!
Weird that this year’s Prop 13 relates to property taxes (though obviously not as sweeping a measure as the famous Prop 13 from Howard Jiveass…)
No on 14, 16, and 17. Although I support 15, I question whether right now with the State strapped for cash, will this Prop. sell?