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BERKELEY - California voters will be asked Tuesday to put billions of their tax dollars toward creating affordable housing, improving schools and protecting the environment. The votes may shed light on how comfortable Californians feel spending as the economy continues to falter.
If approved, three measures on the California ballot would allow the state to spend $37.8 billion over the next 30 years to help homeless people and migrant workers find housing, fix rundown schools, protect coastal land from development and improve the quality of the state's drinking water.
Californians will vote on seven statewide propositions Tuesday, but only Propositions 46, 47 and 50 would have the state take on new debt. The three propositions require a simple majority to pass.
Proposition 46 would let the state sell $2.1 billion in bonds to help a wide range of disadvantaged people ---- including poor senior citizens, battered women and farmworkers ---- find rental housing or buy their own homes. With interest, the state could end up paying as much as $4.7 billion for the bonds over 30 years.
Proposition 47 would allow the state to sell $13.05 billion in bonds to help schools, colleges and universities pay for building and updating their campuses. To pay off the bonds in 30 years, the state could end up spending as much as $26.2 billion.
Proposition 50 would let the state sell bonds worth $3.44 billion to fund a wide range of water-related projects, including buying undeveloped land along the coast, cleaning up water in the Bay Delta, and cleaning up drinking water supplies throughout California. The bonds could cost taxpayers up to $6.9 billion over 30 years.
Each ballot measure has a large coalition of supporters who say their proposition would address urgent needs starving for state support.
"If we wait around to address the housing issue, it's only going to get more expensive to deal with," said Doug Shoemaker, the Bay Area spokesman for the coalition backing Prop. 46.
Shoemaker echoed arguments offered by supporters of each of the propositions: a big state investment in solving these problems now would prove far cheaper than neglecting them and trying to solve them in the future.
"The state wants to buy the land, but hasn't had the money to do so," said Steve Aceti, a lobbyist representing California's coastal communities. "If Prop. 50 passes, it will take care of many land disputes up and down the coast."
But all three propositions are opposed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which says California's state government can't afford to pay for such big-ticket expenses now.
"If passed, these bonds will result in nearly $19 billion of dollars of additional debt placed on the backs of California taxpayers," the group's web site says. "(I)n these times of economic uncertainty, and state government unable to come to grips with a $24 billion deficit, it would be foolish to add to the public debt."