Guide to 10 measures on California's 2024 ballot
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Elections in California aren't just when we choose our leaders. They're also one-day legislative sessions, when voters determine some of the state's biggest policy decisions.
Why it matters: Voters are facing 10 big questions that could redirect the state's approach on issues like crime and criminal justice, school funding, rent control and climate spending.
Here's a brief rundown on the ballot measures coming your way:
📚 Proposition 2: Allows the state to borrow $10 billion to fix and build school facilities, with $8.5 billion headed to K-12 schools and $1.5 billion to community colleges.
🏳️🌈 Proposition 3: Amends the California Constitution to remove language that still says a marriage can only be between a man and a woman.
🌎 Proposition 4: Allows the state to borrow $10 billion for climate spending, including $3.8 billion for water projects, $1.5 billion for wildfire prevention, $1.2 billion to mitigate sea-level rise and $1.2 billion for land conservation.
🗳️Proposition 5: Lowers the voter approval threshold needed for local housing and infrastructure bond measures from two-thirds to 55%.
🚫 Proposition 6: Amends the state constitution to ban involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, and disallow state prisons from disciplining inmates who refuse to work. Prisons can still give time credits in exchange for work.
💲Proposition 32: Increases the minimum wage from $16 to $18 for employees of companies with 26 or more worker in 2025, and for everyone in 2026. Inflation adjustments to the minimum wage resume in 2027.
🏡 Proposition 33: Allows local governments to implement rent control, eliminating the 1995 law known as Costa-Hawkins. Cities could also restrict how much a landlord could increase rent for a new tenant.
❤️🩹 Proposition 34: Forces certain health care groups to spend 98% of revenue earned in California on direct patient care.
- As CalMatters has covered, Prop. 34 is sponsored by landlords and appears to affect only the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit funding Prop. 33, its third attempted rent control measure.
🏥 Proposition 35: Makes a state tax on health plans that is due to expire at the end of 2026 permanent, beginning in 2027.
🚔 Proposition 36: Increases penalties for some drug and theft crimes, partially rolling back 2014's Proposition 47.