2012 California Propositions

Pro­pos­i­tion 30, Gov. Jerry Brown's tax ini­ti­at­ive, would nar­row the state's budget gap by bring­ing in $34 bil­lion or more over sev­en years — much of it by rais­ing in­come taxes tem­por­ar­ily on those with in­comes over $250,000, and the rest by a tem­por­ary, quarter-cent in­crease in the sales tax.

The in­come tax in­crease would ex­pire after sev­en years. The sales tax in­crease would ex­pire after four years. The ini­ti­at­ive would also guar­an­tee aid to loc­al gov­ern­ments to help pay for the re­spons­ib­il­it­ies that the Le­gis­lature shif­ted onto their shoulders through Brown's pub­lic safety re­align­ment strategy.

If the ini­ti­at­ive fails, $6 bil­lion in auto­mat­ic cuts would go in­to ef­fect this year, mainly at the ex­pense of pub­lic schools.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 31 is sponsored by the bi­par­tis­an re­form group Cali­for­nia For­ward. The meas­ure would shift some de­cision-mak­ing power from the state to loc­al gov­ern­ments and from the Le­gis­lature to the gov­ernor, in part by giv­ing the gov­ernor new uni­lat­er­al power to cut state spend­ing in case of a fisc­al emer­gency if the Le­gis­lature fails to act.

It would make it harder for the Le­gis­lature to pass some bills and would re­quire law­makers to spend time over­see­ing and eval­u­at­ing state pro­grams. Budget­ing would move from an an­nu­al to a two-year cycle. Cit­ies, counties and oth­er loc­al gov­ern­ments would be able to re­ject some state reg­u­la­tions in fa­vor of their own, and loc­al gov­ern­ments would get new power to al­loc­ate prop­erty taxes among them­selves.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 32 would ban labor uni­ons, cor­por­a­tions, gov­ern­ment con­tract­ors and state and loc­al gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ers from spend­ing money de­duc­ted from em­ploy­ee paychecks for polit­ic­al pur­poses.

It would pre­vent labor uni­ons and cor­por­a­tions from mak­ing dona­tions to can­did­ates for of­fice, al­though they would be able to con­tin­ue to pay for in­de­pend­ent cam­paigns to sup­port or op­pose can­did­ates. It would ban gov­ern­ment con­tract­ors from donat­ing to elec­ted of­fi­cials who have a role in award­ing their con­tracts.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 33 is backed primar­ily by George Joseph, chair­man of Mer­cury In­sur­ance, which sup­por­ted a sim­il­ar ini­ti­at­ive (Pro­pos­i­tion 17) in 2010; it failed.

The meas­ure would re­vise a por­tion of Pro­pos­i­tion 103, the 1988 ini­ti­at­ive that over­hauled prop­erty and cas­u­alty in­sur­ance reg­u­la­tion, to let in­surers of­fer dis­counts to new auto­mobile in­sur­ance cus­tom­ers who'd ob­tained cov­er­age from one of their com­pet­it­ors.

The dis­count would be avail­able on a pro-rated basis for those who'd main­tained cov­er­age with no more than a 90-day lapse, un­less the lapse was caused by a tem­por­ary job loss, fur­lough or act­ive-duty mil­it­ary ser­vice. Con­versely, it would al­low in­surers to seek high­er rates for cus­tom­ers who did not qual­i­fy for the new dis­count.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 34 would end the death pen­alty in Cali­for­nia and re­place it — both for newly con­victed in­mates and, ret­ro­act­ively, for those who are already on death row — with a sen­tence of life without the pos­sib­il­ity of pa­role.

In a nod to vic­tims' rights ad­voc­ates, it would also cre­ate a spe­cial fund for loc­al law en­force­ment agen­cies. Over the course of four years, the Le­gis­lature would al­loc­ate $30 mil­lion an­nu­ally from the gen­er­al fund ($10 mil­lion in the 2012-2013 fisc­al year) to this spe­cial fund, which would be in­ten­ded to speed the ar­rest rate for hom­icide and rape.

The money would be off­set by sav­ings from the elim­in­a­tion of the death pen­alty, es­tim­ated to be as high as $184 mil­lion a year.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 35 would ex­pand the defin­i­tion of hu­man traf­fick­ing to in­clude, among oth­er things, dis­tri­bu­tion of ob­scene ma­ter­i­als that de­pict minors, wheth­er or not the dis­trib­ut­or knew or had any con­tact with the minor de­pic­ted.

It would im­pose new ob­lig­a­tions on law en­force­ment to identi­fy vic­tims of hu­man traf­fick­ing and new train­ing re­quire­ments on law en­force­ment agen­cies. It would in­crease pen­al­ties for some traf­fick­ing of­fenses to life in pris­on and would raise crim­in­al fines, which would fund law en­force­ment and vic­tim ser­vices. It would re­quire people con­victed of traf­fick­ing to re­gister as sex of­fend­ers and to provide in­form­a­tion about their on­line activ­ity.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 36 would make Cali­for­nia's three-strikes law a little more le­ni­ent by re­quir­ing a third strike to be for a ser­i­ous or vi­ol­ent felony.

Un­der cur­rent law, when someone with two or more ser­i­ous or vi­ol­ent felony con­vic­tions is con­victed of a third felony -- no mat­ter what the ser­i­ous­ness -- he or she is sup­posed to be sen­tenced to 25 years to life. Un­der Pro­pos­i­tion 36, if the third strike is a non-ser­i­ous, non­vi­ol­ent felony, the con­vict would in­stead be sen­tenced to double the nor­mal term for that crime; for ex­ample, a third-striker found guilty of a crime for which the nor­mal sen­tence would be two to four years would in­stead get four to eight years.

This doesn't ap­ply if the per­son's cur­rent or pre­vi­ous crimes in­cluded cer­tain drug-, sex- or gun-re­lated of­fenses; such crimes would still war­rant a life sen­tence. Ac­cord­ing to the le­gis­lat­ive ana­lyst, the meas­ure would save the state up to $90 mil­lion a year in cor­rec­tions costs.

[For the re­cord, Oct. 29, 2012: An earli­er ver­sion of this sum­mary said the sen­tence of 25 years to life was auto­mat­ic. It is not.]

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 37 would re­quire raw and pro­cessed food that has been pro­duced en­tirely or in part through ge­net­ic en­gin­eer­ing to be clearly labeled as such on the front pack­age or, if there is no pack­age or la­bel, on the shelf or bin where it is dis­played for sale.

It would re­quire re­tail­ers to en­sure that food offered for sale is cor­rectly labeled or doc­u­ment that the product is ex­empt. Res­taur­ant food and oth­er food that is in­ten­ded for im­me­di­ate con­sump­tion would be ex­empt. Products from an­im­als that may have con­sumed ge­net­ic­ally en­gin­eered food but were not them­selves ge­net­ic­ally en­gin­eered would be ex­empt.

It would ban the word "nat­ur­al" and sim­il­ar words from be­ing used on ge­net­ic­ally en­gin­eered food la­beling and ad­vert­ising. State and loc­al gov­ern­ments and private parties could sue to en­force the meas­ure.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 38, sponsored by civil-rights at­tor­ney Molly Mun­ger and the Cali­for­nia PTA, is the main al­tern­at­ive on the bal­lot to Gov. Jerry Brown's tax plan, Pro­pos­i­tion 30.

The Mun­ger ini­ti­at­ive would raise more than $115 bil­lion through a 12-year in­crease in per­son­al in­come tax rates. Un­like Brown's pro­pos­al, Pro­pos­i­tion 38 would ded­ic­ate all the new rev­en­ue to pub­lic schools, early-child­hood edu­ca­tion and, for the first four years, bond debt.

The bond pro­vi­sion would free up about $3 bil­lion a year to help close the state's budget gap, but not enough to avert the $6 bil­lion in cuts that the Le­gis­lature man­dated should Pro­pos­i­tion 30 fail to be­come law. If both Pro­pos­i­tions 30 and 38 garner a ma­jor­ity, the one that re­ceives the most votes would go in­to ef­fect.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 39, sponsored by hedge-fund man­ager Tom Stey­er and a co­ali­tion of en­vir­on­ment­al and "green" busi­ness groups, would raise an es­tim­ated $1 bil­lion an­nu­ally by elim­in­at­ing a cor­por­ate tax break the state Le­gis­lature cre­ated in 2009.

That break al­lows multistate busi­nesses to use either of two for­mu­las to cal­cu­late how much they owe: one tied to their sales here, the oth­er to their sales, payroll and prop­erty in the state. The law would re­quire multistate busi­nesses, ex­cept for cer­tain cable TV op­er­at­ors, to pay taxes based solely on their sales in Cali­for­nia.

Half the money raised by the ini­ti­at­ive, up to $550 mil­lion, would be ded­ic­ated to al­tern­at­ive en­ergy and en­ergy ef­fi­ciency pro­jects at pub­lic build­ings. The rest would go in­to the state's gen­er­al fund.

— Los Angeles Times

Pro­pos­i­tion 40 is a ref­er­en­dum that al­lows voters to ap­prove or re­ject the state Sen­ate dis­trict maps pro­duced last year by an in­de­pend­ent cit­izens re­dis­trict­ing com­mis­sion. A "Yes" vote would keep the Sen­ate dis­trict lines in place. A "no" vote would res­cind the maps and cur­rent dis­trict lines and re­quire a court to draw new lines.

This meas­ure poses some con­fu­sion for two reas­ons: First, as with all ref­er­en­dums, the people who put it on the bal­lot are ask­ing voters to vote "no." (Pro­ponents of oth­er ini­ti­at­ives gen­er­ally want voters to vote "yes.") Second, now pro­ponents of Pro­pos­i­tion 40 are not even ask­ing voters to vote on their meas­ure at all. They have giv­en up their cam­paign.

— Los Angeles Times