The California Primary Election (for Governor) is coming up and there are six Propositions on the ballots. The first is Prop 40: The California Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe Neighborhood Parks, and Coastal Protection Act of 2002, put on the ballot by the state legislature. In summary, Prop 40 allows the state of California to issue $2.6 billion in bonds to pay for wildlife conservation, restoration, water quality, state parks, historical sites, and other outdoorsy programs. The bonds would have a 5% interest for 25 years, costing the state $4.3 billion to pay back. The money will for the most part not be used to maintain any new property purchases, so it will be up to the local cities and counties to maintain the new parks and other properties bought with the bond money (this could be at most a few tens of millions of dollars statewide). Note that since 1980 other bonds have been passed for much the same purposes, which raised $7.6 billion, of which about $1.2 billion is still left to spend.

The Pro argument, presented by Audubon California, Congress of California Seniors, and League of Women Voters for California all state that Prop 40 will protect our drinking water, air and beaches from toxic pollution. It also protects coastal lands, gives kids safe parks to play in, and increases our quality of life. A cleaner California will keep our tourist industry strong. They also note that there will be strong fiscal safeguards to make sure the money is well spent. My feeling is that a cleaner environment is nice, but Prop is not a plan, it's just money. I'm vaguely uneasy with their claims with no plan of action.

The rebuttal from the Con point out that Props 12 and 13 two years ago were almost the same thing as Prop 40. What was done with the $4 billion in bond money? All wasted on "pork" not parks. They then list a few examples of the pork spending and ask us if we want to trust these people again. My take: I don't care about Props 12 and 13. Maybe they were mismanaged, but that has little relation to Prop 40. Sure, I didn't get a good feel for what the "strong fiscal safeguards" are going to be, but I don't even know if the supporters are the same as for the previous two Propositions. As for the list of pork spending, they look fine to me. Putting quotes around various words doesn't mean anything to me (e.g. '$2 billion for a "camp" in Alameda County' doesn't tell me whether it was really good or bad). So far, I'm not convinced by either side.

The Con argument, presented by the California State Senate Constitutional Amendments Committee, the California State Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife, and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, boils down to "we can't afford it" and "Prop 40 doesn't guarantee anything". They point out that we now have a projected budget deficit of $14 billion (I think that's mostly because of the energy crisis, which wiped out our reserve funds), the bond will cost California $5 billion to repay (contradicting the Legislative Analyst who is a neutral party), we have $42 billion to repay in other bonds and the interest alone is $2.5 billion a year (Note that the numbers look large, but our state budget was $99.4 billion last in 2000 and the payments for bonds amounts to about $1.7 billion a year, again contradicting the Con numbers). Prop 40 won't provide clean water because none of the money will go to build water storage reservoirs nor water treatment facilities; it won't provide safe parks because "the vast majority of the money will not go to neighborhood parks". (There's more to water conservation than new treatment plants. Of course parks won't get the majority of the funds -- how much can a park possibly cost?) The Con side seems to be making up their own numbers and I think their two examples are too obvious attempts at manipulation. Doesn't look good for their side. The Cons end with a patriotic flavor, stating that since the September 11 attack, we have higher priorities to law enforcement and disease control -- Prop 40 should be low priority spending.

The rebuttal is disappointing. Basically saying Prop 40 will do these things, that's why XYZ group is supporting it. They do reiterate again that Prop 40 does not raise taxes, existing state revenues will be used (and when those revenues aren't enough, there will be tax raises, duh!).

A cleaner and safer environment is good, and I'm all for it. I don't think that September 11 means that we should all become paranoid and up security and law enforcement to the nth degree. Yes, some and maybe a lot of the money will be wasted on various fringe causes and projects, the Proposition is not clear enough to prevent that, even with an "annual independent audit". Really, I would have been more swayed to the Con side had they come up with an alternative that has the same goals but a better plan. Playing on our fears and being so obviously manipulative in their argument is just bad form. I note also that this bond will cost the state $172 million a year in payments. Our economy will be much better by then so I have no worries about California getting into serious debt because of this bond.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough information to make a good decision. How much are we currently spending on these goals? How effective are they? How bad is the problem, or bad are the projections? I have to make the assumption that this money is needed, just because conservation causes are not well funded in general. And therefore I will vote Yes on Prop 40.