Here is how I am voting, ordered roughly by how critical/important your vote is and how important the outcome is.
Measure RTM: Yes. The basic situation is that before 2020 BART was one of the least subsidized transit agencies in the country; it paid for about 60% of its expenses from rider fares, and most of this was from people who commuted every day. Ridership has dropped drastically since COVID and many people who used to commute 5 days a week now commute 2-3 days a week.
In many ways BART is a victim of its own success. County Connection, the local bus agency, has a 90% subsidy rate; fares only cover 10% of its expenses. If 50% of riders stopped paying fares, they would still have 95% of the previous revenue level. This is why they haven't been hit as hard by ridership declines. BART has.
This means we either need to increase the subsidy or decrease the level of service. The problem with cutting service is that ridership (and fare revenue) also drops when you do this. So for every $1 you "save" by running fewer trains, you only get back 50-60 cents, because fewer people ride a less convenient train.
The other problem is that if people aren't riding BART they're going to drive, and another 10% more cars on the road might lead to 20-50% more congestion, because traffic and congestion do not have a linear 1:1 relationship.
If you take BART you benefit from trains coming more often. If you don't take BART, you benefit from the fact that other people take it, and keep the roads clear.
Measure W: Yes. Prop 13 is the original sin of California politics. Our schools are largely funded by property taxes, and Prop 13 caps tax increases at 2% per year. In Texas and Washington and other states, if your home increases in value, your property taxes go up and schools automatically get more revenue. Here, the cap means that schools are constantly struggling if inflation goes up by more than 2%, or they want to give teachers a raise that exceeds the cost of living.
Prop 13 also pushes up the cost of housing. In other states, many people want to add to the housing supply so new homes share the property tax burden (and existing homes, and the tax bill, do not appreciate in price by so much). In California, where many long time homeowners have their homes assessed at a tiny fraction of their actual value, there is no financial penalty for opposing new housing and watching your home value appreciate. Prop 13 also punishes people for moving by giving them a new market rate tax bill, so e.g. empty nesters continue living in a 5 bedroom house 20 years after their kids have moved out.
The high cost of housing means that it's difficult to attract and retain quality teachers. It also means that families have cut back on the number of kids they have. Since 2020 enrollment is down district wide by about 12%. It's not a strict drop tied to COVID and there's no consequent increase in private school enrollment. It's just really goddamn expensive to raise kids in this area.
Since state reimbursement is tied to enrollment rates, AUHSD has to pay for all of the same facilities at five campuses, but they have less revenue to do it with.
People who oppose raising revenue for schools love talking about how many "administrators" AUHSD has for some reason - people who do things like accounting, payroll, and procurement. Besides being a penny wise, pound foolish mechanism for saving money, if you look at the website for any private school in the area - Bentley, Seven Hills, etc - you'll see far more "administrators" per student than AUHSD.
And if you hate having to vote every other year to increase funding for schools - you can blame Prop 13 for that again; it's illegal to raise taxes without an election.
Insurance Commissioner: Ben Allen. Every insurer in the state is responsible for backstopping the California FAIR plan, which is the insurer of last resort for people who cannot get insurance by other means. The FAIR plan has taken on a disproportionate number of policies, and a disproportionate amount of risk, in fire zones. It does not have enough cash on hand to pay out claims if Orinda burns or Rockridge burns or Malibu burns.
If it doesn’t have enough money, they will raise the money by adding a surcharge to every home insurance policy in the state, or directly via the state budget (which will increase your taxes, or decrease spending on some other priority you care about).
Why you should care if you’re a renter: your landlord has to buy home insurance and if they can’t get competitive quotes for home insurance, or if they have to pay FAIR plan surcharges, they are likely going to pass the exorbitant cost through to you.
Broadly speaking: insurance is a pretty simple business IF you let insurers charge enough. A $1 million house has a 1 in 500 chance of burning down; $1 million multiplied by (1/500) = $2000/year, plus some overhead for the work it took you to develop a model and assess the risk of the house and pay for someone to answer the phone. And then ideally you get a lot of different companies to compete to offer the best price, or maybe someone has a more sophisticated model, or maybe someone works with the homeowner to offer them a lower rate in exchange for fire defenses - zone zero, sprinklers pointed at the exterior, etc.
The problem in California is that we don’t let insurers charge enough to people in fire zones, and people in fire zones who are paying fair rates think they are being gouged. Here's a lady in Orinda who owns a $3m house in a very high severity fire hazard zone. She has oak trees growing right to the roof line. She thinks it is an outrage she is being charged $13,000 for home insurance. But $13k/year for a $2.5m rebuild cost represents about a 1 in 200 chance her house burns down, which honestly seems like a reasonable risk assessment for a VHFHSZ Orinda house surrounded by oak trees.
My point is - if she isn't paying the fair price to insure her $3m house then someone else will be. I don't think we should get in the business of subsidizing insurance for $3m homes. I also don’t think we should be subsidizing insurance for people in fire zones - it will push up the price of houses there and encourage new houses to get built there.
Ben Allen largely understands this and that we should let insurers price risk appropriately, and charge market rates to people who own homes in fire zones.
Jane Kim’s big proposal is to do “universal insurance,” and basically have the state take a bigger role in the insurance market. In theory there are no problems here - the state charges everyone an accurate rate to insure their homes, the fund remains well capitalized, and it functions like a big insurer. In practice, the pressure to undercharge homeowners in fire zones from the literal next governor of California, who has promised to freeze insurance rates, let alone Malibu real estate agents and Rebecca Bauer Kahan and the lady from Orinda above, will be immense. We already know this is a problem because the FAIR plan has asked for the power to raise rates to market levels and Ricardo Lara, the current insurance commissioner, rejected them. If we are undercharging insurers in fire zones that means someone else - probably you - is going to pay the bill, or some program you care about is going to get cut in order to pay for Pacific Palisades rebuilds.
The insurance market is in really bad shape - every homeowner in the state paid a surcharge this year to rebuild Palisades homes because the FAIR plan didn’t have enough to pay out claims. Now is not the time to encourage the state to take on even more liability, or cut insurance coverage, or monkey with private insurers who will just leave the state altogether. State Farm General reported $5 billion in losses over 9 years in California. Those are unsustainable numbers yet they are still here. The only thing worse than State Farm taking a $5 billion loss is the state of California taking a $5 billion loss. Jane Kim’s policies would put California on the wrong end of wildfire risk.
There are a lot of things in California worth subsidizing with higher taxes, but $3m house rebuilds in Orinda are not one of them.
Measure U: Yes. I was confused why they were doing a ballot measure when many other sites use the state density bonus to get additional density and height. They can't use the density bonus on this site because it's not zoned for housing.
I think the city is a bit miffed about the ballot measure - they are working on general plan amendments - but I also understand the site owner's perspective. It can take years to get a general plan amendment through, just to get voted down or watered down at the end. In 2023 a site on Stow Ave came up for discussion regarding General Plan amendments, the proposal was voted down 3-2, and it hasn't been back since.
Measure T: Yes - The city's current Treasurer has run unopposed the last four election cycles. I think that voters ability to hold specific people responsible for city problems is pretty limited - if the city had the financial issues that we supposedly need to be able to recall this person for, you could recall the City Council (who approves the budget), run on a campaign of replacing the appointed Treasurer, or run on a campaign of replacing the city manager.
WCSD School Board: Aileen Ong, Eryn King, Rod Ehsani. I have a lot of concerns with primary education - public and private - the best summation I've found is in this (long) essay.
If you want a shorter, podcast version, listen to the "Sold a Story" podcast and then think about the conditions that let a program that hurts students reading ability proliferate for that long. WCSD still uses a curriculum sold by Lucy Calkins, one of the women at the heart of the story, who for decades promoted a "look at the first letter and guess", and "kids will learn to read if they are surrounded by books" theories of reading.
I think these candidates have the best shot at trying to improve the education our kids get. Among other things - they actually wrote back when I wrote to them asking for details on what they think about this.
Prop 1: housing bond. Yes
Prop 2: rainy day fund. Yes. Remember when everyone was blaming Gavin Newsom because in 2021 the state had a $70 billion surplus and then in 2022 it had a $60 billion deficit, or something like that. "How could he be so stupid" etc. That is not actually his fault; you can blame the voters for 1) passing Prop 13, which makes California uniquely reliant on volatile income taxes vs. property taxes 2) passing something called the "Gann Limit" which requires budget surpluses to be spent.
Prop 3: make an existing income tax permanent. Sure
Prop 4: public election funding. SF Chronicle recommends a "No" vote.
Prop 5: recall reform: SF Chronicle also recommends a "No" vote.
Prop 37: down payment assistance. No. The primary problem in California is a lack of supply of housing, not a lack of demand. Fixing the problem by adding more subsidies to the demand side is like trying to "fix" a game of musical chairs by making some of the players faster or stronger. The problem is the number of chairs.
Prop 38: research bond. No. This is one of the most corrupt, self-serving ballot measures I've ever seen. Half of the money will go to a single research facility. The founder of the research facility put this on the ballot and has spent $30 million trying to get it passed.
If California wants to fund research - it should! we can pass it through the budget or put a bond measure on that won't direct half the money to the people who wrote the ballot measure.
Prop 39: Voter ID. No. It is very funny that people don't understand the actual implications of voter restrictions have changed - Republicans think there is lots of voter fraud and push for more restrictive voting, but Democrats are actually more motivated to vote, so restrictions on voting, or special elections, tend to hurt Republicans and help Democrats.
Voter fraud is rare. Sure it's easy to imagine a way to fake a vote or two but what does that get you? Any scheme to cast the hundreds or thousands of fraudulent ballots you'd need to impact a typical race would get detected very quickly. And anyone involved would be risking a substantial jail sentence.
Prop 40: billionaire tax. No. Here's one analysis that says, even if the tax passes it will be a net revenue loser for the state. I think it would be pretty bad for a lot of industries (and the many billions beyond what the billionaires pay, that their employees pay in tax revenue) if the CEO's at many of these firms decided to relocate out of the state.
It's also just a horrible way to go about it - a "one time" tax raised via ballot measure from a special interest group. If this is the policy then elect representatives to the Legislature who will vote to put it in place.
Props 41 and 42: No
Prop 43: No. Again, Prop 13 is the original sin of California politics. This would make it harder to address Prop 13's shortcomings by raising the threshold for passing the taxes that allow us to pay for things like schools and roads and sewer service.
Prop 44: No. It's not clear why community health clinics need this level of management or oversight from state voters, if the Legislature cares about this they can pass a law. In general excessive focus on "overhead" for charities is a bad sign. Sometimes charities need a lot of overhead to spend the rest of their money effectively!
SF Chronicle also recommends a No vote.
Prop 45: no position. The primary impact of this would be to enable sprawl and other uses like solar farms, which also face opposition. Most "infill" housing (housing surrounded by other urban uses) is already exempt from CEQA under existing laws.
On the one hand I think sprawl is pretty bad and long commutes are really bad. On the other hand people choose sprawl over their other options and we should put some weight on the choices people actually make.
Governor: Xavier Becerra. One of the most disappointing candidate fields I have seen for a very important role leading the government for 30 million people. I do not have high hopes for Xavier Becerra who was appointed head of HHS during a pandemic and did not really do anything notable or newsworthy.
Walnut Creek City Council: There are only two candidates running for two seats. I have met both candidates and they are very nice. I wish them the best of luck.
County Supervisor, District 4: Ken Carlson is the only candidate on the ballot. This is a shame because we have tried really hard to get him to pay any attention to sidewalks or street safety in our neighborhood and he won't respond to our emails or phone calls - literally, ten or twenty people writing in about a safety issue and he is too busy.