Playing political Whac-A-Mole as issue of bond measure language pops up again

The California Legislature is often the arena for games of political Whac-A-Mole.

A piece of controversial legislation fails to clear all of the Capitol’s procedural hurdles and appears to die, but suddenly it reappears through the legislative gimmick known as “gut-and-amend” or it’s reintroduced in the subsequent legislative session.

A classic example involves a law passed by the Legislature in 1975 that limited monetary damages in medical malpractice lawsuits.

Personal injury lawyers spent the next 47 years trying to either repeal the law or raise the limit but repeatedly failed. Finally, in 2022, they forged a compromise with medical providers and insurers.

This is an account of another issue that never seems to go away, involving the wording of ballot measures that authorize the issuance of bonds or that raise taxes.

Longstanding state law requires that such ballots include a statement, no longer than 75 words, summarizing what each measure would do. However, it was once common practice for sponsors of bond or tax measures to use their 75 words to extol the virtues of their measures, rather than reveal their financial impact.

In 2015 a Republican Assemblymember from Big Bear, Jay Obernolte, carried a bill to make the ballot summaries less slanted and more factual, by requiring that measures proposed via initiative tell voters how much money they would raise if approved and how long the new taxes would remain in effect.

Two years later another Obernolte measure imposed the requirement on tax and bond measures sponsored by local governments and required that the 75-word explanation be a “true and impartial synopsis” of the proposal, “in language that is neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.”

Ballot measure sponsors and local officials intensely disliked the new laws and persuaded Scott Wiener, a Democratic senator from San Francisco, to use the gut-and-amend tactic in 2019 to create legislation that would repeal much of what Obernolte, now a congressman, had wrought.

The Wiener bill would have allowed sponsors of tax and bond measures to skip including financial impacts in the 75-word statements and, instead, essentially allow them to tell voters, “See voter guide for tax rate information.”

The motive was obvious. Having the financial impact estimate in the voter guide, rather than the 75-word summary, meant voters would be less likely to see it and therefore more likely to vote for the measure.

Wiener won legislative approval, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed this bill, declaring “I am concerned that this bill as crafted will reduce transparency for local tax and bond measures.”

Wiener tried it again but it failed in the Legislature’s 2023-24 session. He argued that the 75-word limit leaves “little to no room to explain how the new taxes or bonds will actually be spent to benefit the local community.”

In other words, he and the bill’s sponsors wanted to revive the old practice of using the 75-word summary to extol the virtues of proposed tax and bond measures, discarding the requirement that it be a “true and impartial synopsis.”

Another Democratic legislator from San Francisco, Assemblywoman Catherine Stefani, has introduced Assembly Bill 699, which would allow the tax effects of bond measures, now required to be mailed to voters, to be emailed instead or posted on the sponsoring government’s website.

The new bill is sponsored by advocates of low-income housing who believe that housing bonds would be easier to pass if their property tax increases were less evident, but the effects of AB 699’s enactment would apply to all bond issues, not just those for housing.

Fooling voters is never a good thing. Time to get out the mallet.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.