California General Election - Official Voter Information Guide
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Title and Summary Analysis Arguments and Rebuttals Text of Proposed Law

PROP 84

WATER QUALITY, SAFETY AND SUPPLY. FLOOD CONTROL. NATURAL RESOURCE PROTECTION. PARK IMPROVEMENTS. BONDS. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF PROPOSITION 84 ARGUMENT AGAINST PROPOSITION 84

PROP. 84 PROTECTS CALIFORNIA’S WATER, LAND, AND COASTLINE.

California is growing rapidly, putting new pressure each year on our water resources, land, coast, and ocean. Prop. 84 protects these vital natural resources, which are essential to our health, our economy, and our quality of life.

YES on 84 PROTECTS DRINKING WATER QUALITY.

The water we drink and use to grow our food is vulnerable to contamination. Prop. 84 will:

• Remove dangerous chemicals from our water supply.

• Prevent future groundwater contamination.

• Prevent toxic runoff from flowing into our water.

Prop. 84 is essential to assure our communities CLEAN, SAFE DRINKING WATER.

Last year, there were more than 1,200 beach closing or advisory days in California. Prop. 84 will help prevent toxic pollution from storm drains from contaminating coastal waters and endangering public health.

YES on 84 ASSURES A RELIABLE WATER SUPPLY.

Prop. 84 will increase the reliability of California’s water supply, through conservation and other programs. Every region in the state will benefit from this measure, while being given local control over specific projects to improve local water supply and water quality.

YES on 84 PROTECTS OUR COASTLINE AND CALIFORNIA’S NATURAL BEAUTY.

The measure will help clean and safeguard the ocean and beaches all along California’s coastline, including the San Diego, Santa Monica, Monterey, and San Francisco Bays. It will also provide for safe neighborhood parks and protect the rivers and lakes in which we swim and fish.

YES on 84 PROTECTS AGAINST FLOODING.

An earthquake or a series of major storms could damage our state’s levees, causing dangerous flooding and potentially leaving up to 23 million Californians without safe drinking water.

Efforts are underway to address this urgent threat to public safety and our water supply, but much more needs to be done. Flood control experts agree that Prop. 84 is an important step forward and complements ongoing efforts to improve flood control in California.

YES on PROP. 84 PROTECTS CALIFORNIA’S ECONOMY.

Clean beaches, rivers, and lakes are crucial to tourism, which contributes more than $88 billion to the state economy each year and directly supports more than 900,000 jobs. An adequate supply of clean, safe water is also needed for California’s farms and cities. Prop. 84 protects the water that our economy needs to thrive.

YES on 84 WILL NOT RAISE TAXES—AND INCLUDES TOUGH FISCAL SAFEGUARDS. Prop. 84:

• Is funded entirely from existing revenues and will not raise taxes.
• Will bring federal matching funds into California.
• Includes strict accountability provisions, including yearly independent audits and a citizen’s oversight committee.

PLEASE JOIN US IN VOTING YES on 84.

Conservation groups, business organizations, and water districts across California support Prop. 84. For more information about the measure, please visit www.CleanWater2006.com. Your YES vote will help protect our health, economy, and quality of life now and in the years to come.

PROTECT CALIFORNIA’S DRINKING WATER, LAND, COAST, AND OCEAN. Vote YES on 84.

MARK BURGET, Executive Director
The Nature Conservancy

LARRY WILSON, Chair
Board of Directors, Santa Clara Valley   Water District

E. RICHARD BROWN, Ph.D., Professor School of Public Health, University of   California, Los Angeles


REBUTTAL TO ARGUMENT IN FAVOR
OF PROPOSITION 84

PROPOSITION 84 CANNOT DELIVER ON ITS PROMISES

It will not benefit everyone, but everyone will pay for it through higher taxes or budget cuts for education, law enforcement, and health services.

NO on 84 PROTECTS THE PUBLIC TREASURY

Prop. 84 gives state bureaucrats the power to spend your money without effective oversight. This proposal eliminates protections against corruption and favoritism in current law and it bypasses our competitive bidding system. It prevents audits by the State Controller, the State Auditor, and even the Legislative Analyst. It exempts itself from the Administrative Procedures Act. Ask yourself why the proponents fear routine audits.

NO on 84 SENDS SACRAMENTO THE RIGHT MESSAGE: WE NEED A RELIABLE WATER SUPPLY

This water bond does not contain ANY funds for new reservoirs, aqueducts, or water storage! The water diversions mandated by this bond will actually take away drinking water from current sources.

NO on 84 PROTECTS YOU FROM SPECIAL INTERESTS

Bond funds can be awarded to the same private organizations that placed this initiative on the ballot, campaigned for it, and bought advertising to promote it. This is a perversion of the initiative process.

NO on 84 SAVES MONEY FOR REAL FLOOD CONTROL

Flood control is vital, but less than 15% of bond funds are dedicated to that purpose—and that money could be chewed up for studies, environmental planning, environmental mitigation, and bureaucratic administration. If bureaucratic reports could stop flooding, we’d no longer have a problem.

PLEASE JOIN US IN VOTING NO on 84.

BILL LEONARD, Member
California State Board of Equalization

RON NEHRING, Senior Consultant
Americans for Tax Reform

LEWIS K. UHLER, President
National Tax Limitation Committee

This measure should have been titled the “Special-Interest-Hidden-Agenda Bond” because it was placed on the ballot by special interests who don’t really want you to know where all your money is going to be squandered. Every special interest that helped get this boondoggle on the ballot will get a share of the taxpayers’ money, but ordinary taxpayers will get nothing from this bond but higher taxes for the next three decades.

This so-called “water bond” has no funding for dams or water storage! The authors set aside billions for bureaucratic studies, unnecessary protections for rats and weeds, and other frivolous projects, but they couldn’t find a single penny to build freshwater storage for our state’s growing population. You have to read the text to believe it.

Only a very small portion of the funds from this enormous bond would be available for repair and maintenance of our levees, but Proposition 1E was placed on the ballot by the Legislature to provide $4,090,000,000 for these same levees. Common sense dictates that we should wait to see how that money is spent before we authorize another $5,388,000,000 in new spending. It would be foolish to lock permanent spending formulas in place, as this initiative seeks to do, when we have no idea what our future needs will be once the funds from Proposition 1E are spent.

This bond represents a huge tax increase. The proponents seem eager to avoid this unpleasant fact, but voters need to understand that bond repayment takes priority over all other government spending. Once issued, bonds cannot be cancelled, repudiated, or discharged in bankruptcy; they can only be repaid with tax revenues. Our state already has a $7 billion budget deficit, and there is no way to pay for this gigantic bond without higher taxes.

Local projects should be funded at the local level. This statewide bond is designed to force people in one part of the state to pay for local projects on the other side of the state. Why should people in Redding pay for urban parks in San Diego? Why tax people in Los Angeles to pay for beetle habitat restoration in Sutter County? This is poor tax policy, and it was clearly designed to benefit the special interests that put this measure on the ballot. We should expect local communities to fund their own local parks and improvements; statewide bonds should be reserved for state parks, colleges, and other capital projects that benefit the whole state.

What is worse, this bond allows unelected, unaccountable state bureaucrats to spend billions of dollars, with little or no real public oversight. Sacramento bureaucrats and special interests will love having a slush fund that they can spend without the need for public hearings and public votes in the Legislature—but we cannot allow that to happen.

Please join me in voting NO on Proposition 84.

BILL LEONARD, Member
California State Board of Equalization


REBUTTAL TO ARGUMENT AGAINST
PROPOSITION 84

The opponent’s argument is simply wrong.

Proposition 84 provides clean water and protects our coast without raising taxes. It is supported by a broad, bipartisan coalition of public interest and business groups including the League of Women Voters of California, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and The Nature Conservancy.

Here are the facts.

• Prop. 84 funds crucial projects needed to assure reliable supplies of clean, safe drinking water.
• Prop. 84 protects all of California’s waters: our rivers, lakes, streams, beaches, and bays.
• Prop. 84 includes strict financial accountability, including a citizen oversight committee, annual independent audits, and full public disclosure.
• Prop. 84 protects our families from toxic pollution, floods, and other hazards through critical public safety projects not funded by other measures.

YES on 84: BENEFITS ALL CALIFORNIANS

Prop. 84 funds local priorities to improve water quality and supply in every region of the state.

YES on 84: SUPPORTED BY CALIFORNIA’S LOCAL WATER DISTRICTS

Proposition 84 is so important that water districts that provide drinking water to more than 23 million Californians all urge YES on 84.

YES on 84: PROTECTS PUBLIC HEALTH

Prop. 84 removes dangerous contaminants from drinking water, cleans up toxic chemicals that contaminate the fish we eat, and keeps dangerous polluted runoff from flowing onto our beaches and into our coastal waters.

YES on 84 protects our land, water, and public health, for our families and for future generations.

Join local water districts, conservation organizations, business groups, and public health experts in voting YES on 84.

ERICH PFUEHLER, California Director
Clean Water Action

JEFF KIGHTLINGER, General Manager
Metropolitan Water District of Southern   California

KAITILIN GAFFNEY, Conservation   Director
The Ocean Conservancy


Arguments printed on this page are the opinions of the authors and have not been checked for accuracy by any official agency.

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