This year, the CA GND Coalition is going to be endorsing a slate of legislation and ballot measures that we can use to talk about the intersections between housing and climate justice. While we’re just coming off the primary election, and November may seem like a long way away for some, the statewide general election ballot landscape is already taking shape.

As some of you know all too well, some ballot measures have already qualified for the November ballot, such as the referendum to overturn the oil well setbacks law (boooo, hissss). Others are still hoping to qualify and/or confirm their place — generally through the legislature (e.g. the various bond proposals, or Asm Bryan’s ACA 16 “Green Amendment”). But a big tent coalition of progressive advocates and establishment Democrats are currently trying every strategy available to remove one ballot measure that already qualified.

The California Business Roundtable (CBRT) has qualified a ballot proposal that they deceitfully name the “Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act” — but advocates have more aptly termed the “Taxpayer Deception Act.”

In short, the CBRT measure would make it much harder for the state and local governments to raise revenue. It does this by reclassifying all revenue measures (e.g. levies, fees, and charges) as taxes, and, crucially, requiring 2/3 voter approval for any new revenue to become law. Beyond that, the measure would apply retroactively to January 1, 2022 — invalidating hundreds of new laws, revenue, and ballot measures, including Measure ULA (the mansion tax with funding for social housing that I’ve previously discussed).

That is no coincidence. Those of you who have been tracking this closely will remember that CBRT and their friends at the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association raised this ballot measure concept back in 2022. If you followed the money back then, you’d have found that the top donors came from corporate real estate, including Kilroy Realty and Douglas Emmett. Those same groups haven’t made any attempt to hide that a primary motivation for the CBRT measure is to invalidate Measure ULA.

As their name implies, CBRT is an organization that advocates on behalf of the largest and wealthiest corporations in California. What’s rather astounding is how efforts like these show how unified disparate corporate interests are in their goals to gut the government services.

Let’s be clear: fundamentally, this is about undermining the public sector — public services, public goods, and our ability to address social issues collectively (i.e. what our taxes do). Many of the conditions we face right now lie in the long and dark shadow of racist, anti-tax measures passed by these same actors many decades ago (or as someone said to me yesterday, “we are haunted by the specter of Prop 13”). Many opponents of this CBRT measure have raised this comparison, calling it this generation’s Prop 13.

It should be no surprise, then, that there is an all-out opposition effort already underway. Last fall, Governor Newsom and former Senate Pro Tem John Burton filed an emergency petition to the California Supreme Court seeking to remove the CBRT measure from the ballot, arguing that it unlawfully undermines essential state and local government services. They were joined by a chorus of others, including former Governor Jerry Brown who cited that the measure would apply to, and all but destroy, the state’s cap-and-trade law. In December, the California Supreme Court signaled they would consider the appeal, with a ruling expected sometime before the end of June.

But that’s not all! Last year, advocates worked with the Legislature to introduce and quickly pass ACA 13 — a relatively simple measure aimed directly at the CBRT proposal. It requires future ballot measures that increase voter approval requirements to also pass by the same margin. This is because, incredibly, the CBRT measure that would require 2/3 voter approval for taxes only needs a simply majority itself to pass. If the CBRT measure does make it on the November ballot, it can expect to be right next to ACA 13.

In the meantime, we don’t need to just sit on our hands to wait for the Supreme Court’s decision or for the vote in November. There is a huge push to publicly shame and put pressure on the supporters of the CBRT measure to back off. Spearheaded by labor and community groups, the Taxpayer Deception Act opposition campaign is in full swing.

All of this is a preview for folks who come to our next coalition call (Weds, March 20th @ 1pm), where we’ll be joined by folks at California Calls to share more about the campaign to stop the CBRT measure and how we can support (hope to see you there!). As corporate interests are united in their efforts to undermine democracy and public services, this is a chance for us to be united in our fight to protect them.