Carl DeMaio and Reform California have released their “Plain English” voter guide to give you an easy-to-understand explanation of the ballot measures and to grade candidates.
WARNING! CA politicians have placed several deceptively-worded measures on your ballot – and special interests are funding dishonest campaigns to trick voters and split the vote in key races.
Check out Reform California's “Plain English” Voter Guide below so you know what you are actually voting on – complete with ratings for all candidates on your ballot (including school board and judges) along with red flags on any measures with hidden tax hikes.
Review the guide below - and share it with your friends, family and neighbors!
No on Prop 1: Borrows $11.25 Billion for Costly Housing Projects
Politicians want to borrow $10 Billion on the taxpayers’ credit card — and you’ll pay back over $17 billion with interest. Provides taxpayer-funded subsidies to developers without reforming costly mandates that make housing so expensive. Prop 1 does nothing to make housing more affordable. Many of the boondoggle projects supported by this bond will cost more than $1 MILLION per unit! Campaign contributors to politicians also get special contracts under Prop 1.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 1
No on Prop 2: Guts State Budget Spending Limit and Cancels Tax Rebates
**DECEPTION ALERT: Appears on your ballot with the politicians’ FALSE ballot title of “Increases State’s Rainy Day Fund.”
Prop 2 claims to create a bigger rainy day fund in the state budget, but in reality it creates a new slush fund for politicians to engage in more wasteful spending. Prop 2 eviscerates the current voter-imposed spending limit on state politicians. Worse, it virtually eliminates the requirement that taxpayers receive tax rebates if revenues exceed the spending limit. With Prop 2, politicians get to keep more of your money so they can waste more of your money.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 2
No on Prop 3: Income Tax Increase
**DECEPTION ALERT: Biased title plays up funding for schools and health care without accountability for how the money is spent.
Makes permanent California’s highest-in-the-nation income tax rates at a time when California is losing employers, jobs and taxpayers to other states and seeing lower tax revenues as a result. Worse, Prop 3 does nothing to reform wasteful spending in the programs it purports to fund, so taxpayers will not see better services. This tax was sold as “temporary” in 2012, extended in 2016 and now politicians want to make it permanent before it even expires.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 3
No on Prop 4: Gives Your Tax Dollars to Politicians’ Campaigns
**DECEPTION ALERT: False cost estimate of only a “few hundred thousand dollars each year” when it will cost MILLIONS a year.
Repeals a previously approved ban on public financing of politicians’ campaigns. Voters wisely decided years ago that their tax dollars should never be used to fund the campaigns of politicians, but with Prop 4 the politicians are refusing to take no for an answer. They already tried to sneak this through the legislature in 2016. The courts threw it out and ruled that voters must decide. Ten years later they’re back, hat in hand, asking to spend your tax dollars on their attack ads. Tell them the same thing the courts did: NO.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 4
No on Prop 5: Weakens Citizens’ Right to Recall Politicians from Office
Makes it harder to Recall a politician from office and simultaneously replace them with a candidate of the voters’ choosing. Under Prop 5, if the voters recall the Governor, you don’t get to choose the replacement — the office is automatically handed to the political machine’s second-in-command. The decision will be entirely out of the voters’ control.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 5
No on Prop 37: Borrows $25 Billion for Costly Housing Projects
Provides taxpayer-funded subsidies to developers without reforming costly mandates that make housing so expensive. Worse, Prop 37 makes the State of California one of the biggest mortgage lenders in America overnight – and taxpayers are left holding the bag for any losses. Many of the boondoggle projects supported by this bond will cost more than $1M per unit! Campaign contributors to politicians also get special contracts under Prop 37.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 37
Yes on Prop 38: Public-Private Partnership Bonds for Immunology Research
Authorizes $8 billion in bonds to support immunology research with the repayment coming from proceeds of cures and treatments. This is the only bond on the ballot that puts the strings on the government instead of the taxpayer. Every drug and treatment developed with this funding must be sold in California at 20% BELOW the national average price. Half of the research money is required by law to target cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 38
Yes on Prop 39: Voter ID to Improve Trust in Elections
**DECEPTION ALERT: Appears on your ballot with the politicians’ FALSE ballot title of “Prohibits Citizens From Voting.”
Prop 39 is a bipartisan solution for Voter ID! That’s why it is supported by large majorities of Democratic, Republican and Independent voters. Prop 39 requires cleaning up and auditing of voter rolls and citizenship verification of anyone registering to vote. It keeps voting simple while adding integrity reforms to make voting more secure. The politicians falsely claim Prop 39 prohibits citizens from voting when it will only prevent non-citizens and ineligible individuals from voting. Prop 39 protects the right of every citizen to vote and restores public trust and confidence in our elections.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 39
No on Prop 40: “Billionaire” Tax that Is Really an “Everybody” Tax
Prop 40 is deceptively being sold as the "Billionaire's Tax" but it is really the "Everybody Tax!" Worse, Prop 40 creates the first-in-the-nation Wealth Tax (or Savings Tax) on Californians. Prop 40 contains a provision allowing state politicians to expand the Wealth Tax to everyone without another vote of the public. Prop 40 allows government to tax the value of your savings, checking account, 401k, stock portfolio, and current equity in your home. If you don't have the cash to pay the Wealth Tax, then you'd be forced to sell some of what you own.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 40
Yes on Prop 41: Audit Special Taxes
Prop 41 would make it harder for state and local politicians to impose special taxes on you. Prop 41 requires that all special taxes include audits on all revenues raised and programs funded through the tax to prevent waste, fraud and abuse or diversion of the funds by politicians. Prop 41 also requires that these special taxes adhere to the state's constitutionally-mandated spending limit. Under California law, when two conflicting measures pass, the one with more votes wins. Even if Prop 40 passes, a bigger yes on Prop 41 cancels it.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 41
Yes on Prop 42: Stop the Savings Tax
Prop 42 would prohibit state and local politicians from imposing a Savings Tax on Californians. Prop 42 would prohibit politicians from taxing the value of your savings, checking account, 401k, stock portfolio, and current equity in your home. We already pay the highest taxes on income, sales, property, gas and our cars— we don't need a Savings Tax on top of all that! If Prop 42 gets more votes than Prop 40, the Wealth Tax dies even if it passes. Every YES on 42 is a second NO on 40.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 42
Yes on Prop 43: Local Taxpayer Protection Initiative (Saves Prop 13)
**DECEPTION ALERT: Appears on your ballot with the FALSE title of “Limits Voters Ability to Raise Revenues for Local Government Services.”
Prop 43 is known as the Save Prop 13— Local Taxpayer Protection Initiative. Prop 43 makes it harder for local politicians to raise your taxes by restoring the two-thirds vote requirement on any local tax measures. It also closes loopholes the politicians have created in Prop 13 to violate the property tax caps that voters originally imposed. Opponents of Prop 43 simply want more of your money to fund their waste and fraud. Vote Yes on Prop 43 to turn the tide to make California more affordable.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 43
No on Prop 44: Imposes Costly Mandates on Community Health Clinics
Increases mandates and costs on community health clinics, threatening their ability to provide patient care. Clinics that miss the arbitrary 90% mandate pay penalties into a government account and hotwired to a narrow special interest group who is one of the politicians’ biggest campaign contributors. Trusted healthcare experts warn that Prop 44 would trigger $1.7 billion in penalties in the first year alone and force clinics across California to close their doors.
>> Watch Short Video Explaining Prop 44
Yes on Prop 45: Reduce Housing Costs by Cutting Red Tape
Reduces regulation and combats frivolous lawsuits that have increased the cost of housing projects. California’s environmental review law (CEQA) has been weaponized to block and delay housing, adding years and millions of dollars to every project. Prop 45 is the first time voters have ever been handed the chance to reform CEQA at the ballot box.
Measure C (NO)
Shasta-Tehama-Trinity Joint Community College District Bond
Authorizes increased taxpayer-funded debt despite massive levels of wasteful spending and awarding contracts without fair and open competition.
Measure Y (NO)
Lassen Union High School District Bond and Tax Increase
Authorizes increased taxpayer-funded debt despite massive levels of wasteful spending and awarding contracts without fair and open competition.
Measure Z (NO)
Lassen Library District Property Tax Increase
Imposes a costly tax despite massive levels of wasteful spending, giving government workers massive salary hikes and pension spikes, and awarding contracts to political supporters without fair and open competition.
Governor: Steve Hilton
Lt. Governor: Gloria Romero
Attorney General: Michael Gates
Secretary of State: Don Wagner
Treasurer: Jennifer Hawks
Controller: Herb Morgan
Insurance Commissioner: You are Doomed
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Sonja Shaw
State Board of Equalization
District 1: Shannon Grove
Every four years voters get to decide whether to vote to retain or not retain justices to the CA Supreme Court and the six Court of Appeals.
California Supreme Court
Kelli Evans - DO NOT RETAIN
Joshua Groban - DO NOT RETAIN
3rd District - California Court of Appeal Justices
Stacy Boulware Eurie (Associate Justice) - DO NOT RETAIN
Lauri A. Damrell (Associate Justice) - DO NOT RETAIN
Laurie M. Earl (Presiding Justice) - DO NOT RETAIN
Aimee A. Feinberg (Associate Justice) - DO NOT RETAIN
Harry E. Hull Jr. (Associate Justice) - RETAIN
Peter A. Krause (Associate Justice) - DO NOT RETAIN
Louis Mauro (Associate Justice) - RETAIN
Shama H. Mesiwala (Associate Justice) - DO NOT RETAIN
Jonathan K. Renner (Associate Justice) - DO NOT RETAIN
Ronald B. Robie (Associate Justice) - DO NOT RETAIN
U.S. House of Representatives
District 1: James Gallagher
Senate
None listed
Assembly
District 1: Heather Hadwick
Lassen Community College District
Trustee Area 1 (Vote for 2): Sophia A. Wages and Robin M. Hanson
Westwood Joint Unified School District
Trustee At-Large: Debbie Ceaglio
Trustee At-Large: Clint Berg
Trustee At-Large: Jerilyn Cleeves
Trustee At-Large: Elizabeth Gurnee
NOTE: If we do not make a recommendation on a candidate or ballot measure, we either could not support the measure or candidates running in that race, or do not have enough information to make an informed recommendation.
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