🏡💚 Déjà vu: ballot measures pulled, bills through suspense

Written By Zach Lou

August 16, 2024

Two months ago, I sent out a newsletter titled “Housing and climate measures held from the ballot.” Different day, similar story:

Earlier this week, supporters pulled two Bay Area ballot measures that were set to be huge fights in November. The first was Regional Measure 4 (RM4), the $20 billion regional affordable housing bond, which was pulled by a unanimous vote by the board of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA). Had it passed at the ballot box, a significant amount of the bond funding would have gone to BAHFA — its biggest infusion of money since it was established in 2019 by the state legislature as the state’s first regional housing finance agency. This was clearly a difficult decision for the BAHFA board, and there was real sadness and misgivings when the board made the vote.

One issue was a recent lawsuit that challenged the stated cost of the bond, as well as the wording of the ballot question. BAHFA took actions to amend the ballot measure in response, and seemed confident that the result would stand up in court. Even so, it costs money to fix ballot language and address lawsuits, costs that were quickly eating up the budget that had been set aside for defending the measure and getting it on the ballot.

At bigger issue was that the fate of the bond was almost certainly tied to another statewide ballot measure, Prop 5. If passed, Prop 5 would lower the voter threshold from 66% to 55% for local bonds that fund affordable housing and public infrastructure (I wrote about this way back in May if you want the deeper dive version about the connection between these two efforts). Current polling for the regional housing bond sitting at just about the 55% threshold, so they would need Prop 5 to pass in order to have a real chance of getting the bond through.

But this was known from the start — why pull the bond now? Supporters seem to feel some growing concerns about Prop 5’s chances, as it has also recently come under legal attack (by none other than the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association). That attack was defeated in court, but it shows the mounting opposition that threatens Prop 5 from getting a majority vote in November.

The regional housing bond had a fighting chance of getting over 55%. But if it did that, and Prop 5 were to fail, the expensive campaign for the bond would all be for naught. Ultimately, that risk proved too big for supporters to keep the bond on the ballot this year.

As I mentioned in my previous newsletter about this, one of the big ways that the current 66% voter threshold harms communities is not just that it defeats popular funding measures, but also through the bonds that never even get proposed: there are many local revenue measures that never get put out to voters in the first place because city/county officials don’t think they will be able to get the 2/3 vote. RM4 is the latest casualty to this, and hopefully one of the last.

All energy now turns to Prop 5 as the necessary first step, with regional bond supporters hoping to place the bond before voters in 2026.

A second Bay Area measure was pulled this week: Richmond’s Polluter Pays initiative, a refinery tax that would have brought in an estimated $60-90 million annually. The removal of this measure comes as slightly more of a mixed bag. The Richmond City Council removed the measure in exchange for a $550 million settlement agreement from Chevron.

Richmond’s elected officials are heralding this as a resounding victory, claiming that the ballot measure brought Chevron to the bargaining table and helped them secure this new funding. The city council also feared litigation that was likely to come attacking the ballot measure (sound familiar?). And yes, the resulting settlement does still mean the polluter is paying.

But supporters of the bill, including GND Coalition members APEN and CBE, are more ambivalent. In a statement by APEN Action and the Polluters Pay Coalition, they   called out the political calculation: “Rather than lose at the ballot box, Chevron offered up an unprecedented $550 million.” But at the same time, the Coalition said “We are disappointed that Richmond voters didn’t get the opportunity to vote on a measure that would have held Richmond’s largest polluter accountable for over a century of health and climate damages for the next 50 years, not just the next 10” (the settlement provides funding to the city for the next 10 years).

Both of these ballot measures were (likely) set to be approved as part of the 2024 GND Ballot Slate (for GND coalition members: reminder that voting ends today!!). While the decisions to remove these measures are very disappointing, there are many others that will be on the ballot in November and deserve our support. We’ll be releasing the results of our Ballot Slate soon, so stayed tuned.

Yesterday was also the dreaded Appropriations suspense day for bills that made it to the second house. As another throwback for the consistent newsletter-readers out there, you may recall some of my optimism after the first Appropriations Committee results back in May (so much so that the newsletter cheesily proclaimed “the suspense isn’t killing us”).

The results since then have been much less hope-inspiring, as many of our priority bills were slowly killed or held in committee:

Housing and Climate Justice Slate

  • ACA 10 (Haney) Right to Housing — HELD IN COMMITTEE

  • ACA 16 (Bryan) Green Amendment — HELD BY AUTHOR

  • SB 1201 (Durazo) Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) Owner Transparency Act — HELD BY AUTHOR

General Slate

  • AB 2200 (Kalra) Guaranteed health care for all — HELD IN APPROPS

  • SB 252 (Gonzalez) CalPERS & CalSTRS Divestment — HELD IN COMMITTEE

  • SB 938 (Min) Utility Accountability — DIED IN COMMITTEE

  • SB 1497 (Menjivar) Polluters Pay Climate Fund — INACTIVE FILE

For our supported bills that made it this far, yesterday’s Appropriations Committee continued the trend of non-lethal suspense results:

  • AB 846 (Bonta) Rent Cap for Affordable Housing — PASSED (Amended)

  • AB 1866 (Hart) Idle wells — PASSED

  • AB 2086 (Schiavo) Transportation Accountability Act — PASSED (Amended)

  • AB 2716 (Bryan) Idle wells — PASSED (Amended)

  • AB 3233 (Addis) Gas Code updates: local control — PASSED

So, I suppose it seems like Approps suspense isn’t the thing that’s killing us. But as we’ve seen with our other bills, that’s far from the only threat. These bills will need our support to make it to the Governor’s desk and get signed, and we’ll be providing more info on how to do that in the coming weeks.

Supporters celebrated putting RM4 on the ballot just two months ago. Source: Bay Link Blog

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Zach Lou
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