California Water Bond (2012)
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The water bond was originally slated to appear on the November 2, 2010 ballot as Proposition 18. However, on August 9, 2010, the California State Legislature voted to postpone the vote on the measure from November 2010 to 2012.
If voters approve the water bond, it will allow the state government to borrow $11.1 billion to overhaul the state's water system.
The effort to postpone the water bond from 2010 to 2012 began on June 29, 2010, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he was going to ask the California State Legislature to yank Proposition 18 from the November ballot. He needed a 2/3rds vote in the legislature to accomplish that objective. Schwarzenegger said he did not think Proposition 18 could win in 2010, which is why he wanted it off the ballot, with the objective of trying again in a different election season.[2] The state legislature had to vote by mid-August on the question of removing Proposition 18 from the ballot.[3]
The motion to put the bond proposition on the November 2010 ballot was passed in the California State Senate and the California State Assembly on November 4, 2009. Dave Cogdill was the primary sponsor of the measure.
The last time California voters approved a water bond was with Proposition 84 in 2006. Proposition 84 authorized $5.4 billion in spending on water projects. Its supporters spent $11.4 million on their campaign urging a "yes" vote. Four years earlier, with Proposition 50 in 2002, voters approved $3.4 billion for water projects.[4]
Although there will be plenty of hot-button issues on the 2010 ballot in California, some observers predict that "the biggest fight, the sharpest split, may come over water."[5]
As of January 2010, California has a total bond debt of $89 billion from previous bond issues approved by the state's voters. The state makes yearly debt payments of about $10 billion on its $89 billion debt load.[6]
Details
Specific spending proposals in the proposal include:
- $455 million for drought relief projects, disadvantaged communities, small community wastewater treatment improvements and safe drinking water revolving fund.
- $1.4 billion for "integrated regional water management projects"
- $2.25 billion for projects that "support delta sustainability options".
- $3 billion for water storage projects
- $1.7 billion for ecosystem and watershed protection and restoration projects in 21 watersheds.
- $1 billion for groundwater protection and cleanup.
- $1.25 billion for "water recycling and advanced treatment technology projects".
Earmarks, pork alleged
The $11 billion water bond bill includes about $2 billion in earmarks for projects that "lawmakers candidly acknowledge were included in the proposal to win the votes that were needed to pass the plan out of the Legislature."[7]
Examples of projects that would be funded if the proposition passes are:
- $40 million to educate the public about California's water.[7]
- $100 million for a Lake Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program for watershed restoration, bike trails and public access and recreation projects.
- $75 million for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, for public access, education and interpretive projects.
- $20 million for the Baldwin Hills Conservancy to be used to buy more land. The conservancy is near the home of Assembly Speaker Karen Bass.
- $20 million for the Bolsa Chica Wetlands in Huntington Beach for interpretive projects for visitors.[7]
Gov. Schwarzenegger said, ""When you hear about pork, what is for some people pork is for us cleaning up the groundwater."[7]
The amount of money requested in the bill was increased by $1.15 billion in an all-night session that ended just hours before the bill was approved.
The proposition "was written largely by lobbyist Joe Caves." He is characterized as "a key player behind previous water bonds" and someone who is "a master broker who brings together environmentalists, business groups and various parts of the state that often have very different interests."[4]
Ballot label details
Ballot title: Safe, Clean, and Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act of 2010
Official summary: To protect water quality and ensure safe, clean drinking water; meet the water supply needs of California residents, farms, businesses; expand water conservation and recycling; restore fish and wildlife habitat; reduce polluted runoff that contaminates rivers, streams, beaches, and bays; and protect the safety of water supplies threatened by earthquakes and other natural disasters; the State of California shall issue bonds totalling eleven billion one hundred forty million dollars ($11,140,000,000) paid from existing state funds subject to independent, annual audits, and citizen oversight.
Summary of estimated fiscal impact: Increased state bond costs of under $385 million annually through 2015, thereafter reaching $765 million annually for a few decades. Potentially significant state and local operations and maintenance costs and local costs for matching requirements.
Supporters
- Meg Whitman, candidate for the Governor of California in 2010 supports the proposal. (Steve Poisner opposes it, refusing to issue any more debt until the state can balance its budget.[1] Jerry Brown has not expressed an opinion.)[5]
- Silicon Valley Leadership Group
- Bay Area Council
- California Chamber of Commerce
- California State Council of Laborers
- Full list of supporters
Opposition
Opponents
- Sierra Club California [2]
- Food & Water Watch [3]
- Clean Water Action [4]
- Planning and Conservation League [5]
- Environmental Justice Coalition for Water [6]
- California Water Impact Network [7]
- Salmon Water Now [8]
- Small Boat Commercial Salmon Fishermens' Association [9]
- Restore the Delta [10]
- Full list of endorsers of the No on the Water Bond campaign [11]
- United Farmworkers [12]
- Republican Assemblyman Bill Berryhill [13]
- Democratic Senator Lois Wolk
- Republican assemblyman Charles DeVore says that the bond amount is approximately double what it would take to "add water and fix the ecologically fragile delta". He asks, "Why is it that the price tag for this is a little more than double what it takes to do the job?"[7]
- Democratic assemblywoman Noreen Evans who has called it "the same tired story all over again". This comment was an allusion to the Peripheral Canal Vote of 1982, when northern California voters went to the ballot box to overturn a plan of the California State Legislature to divert water from northern California to southern California through a concrete canal starting on the periphery of the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta that would have moved water resources south.
- Environmentalist Jonas Minton, a water policy analyst at the Planning and Conservation League, says, "This bloated bond just throws money at water without the thoughtful stewardship the taxpayers deserve."[4]
- Wesley Chesbro, a Democratic member of the California General Assembly. He says, "Funding removal of the Klamath dams while at the same time threatening the flows in the Trinity River is a fool’s bargain. We need to find a way to fund dam removal that doesn’t put the Trinity and our other North Coast rivers at risk."[8]
- Chesbro also says, "They want to take our water and then make us help pay for it."[8]
- The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations[8]
- Patricia Wiggins voted against putting the measure on the ballot. Wiggins says, "I have been strongly supportive of efforts to remove the dams on the Klamath River, which have wreaked havoc on salmon fisheries and other ecosystems downstream. While this bond would include $250 million to help take down those dams, I don't believe the financing should come at the expense of new dams that would harm communities in other parts of the state." She also says that it is "fiscally irresponsible" and that the money "should be spent directly on education, health care and other essential services, not debt payments."[8]
Donors
- "Change to Win" has donated $1 million to the "Committee to Oppose Statewide Water Bonds".
Fiscal impact
According to the California Legislative Analyst's Office, repaying the bond would cost the state's general fund between $600 million and $800 million a year, for a total of $22 to $24 billion over 30 years.
State Treasurer Bill Lockyer's spokesman Tom Dresslar said, "If we keep going down the road we're headed, debt service is going to devour more than 10 percent of general fund revenues in 2014-2015. That is unprecedented. We need to adopt a smarter, long-term approach to planning and financing infrastructure in this state."[4]
Polling information
- See also: Polls, 2010 ballot measures
- A poll, conducted by Tulchin Research and paid for opponents of the water bond, was taken of 600 likely voters in late January 2010. This poll had 55% of voters opposing the bond.[9],[10]
| Date of Poll | Pollster | In favor | Opposed | Undecided |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 2010 | Tulchin | 34% | 55% | 11% |
Path to the ballot
Proposition 18 was voted onto the statewide California ballot by the California State Legislature. Members of the California State Senate approved it by a 28-8 vote and members of the California State Assembly approved putting it on the ballot by a 55-20 vote.
According to reporter John Howard of Capitol Weekly:
- "Many pro-environment Democrats and pro-dam Republicans voted for the bond in a compromise culminating months of negotiations. Many expended political capital in supporting the patchwork proposal...'They had to bite hard on certain things. I know I did,' said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber. Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, agreed. 'There was a very tough set of issues. There were many legislators, myself included, who voted for this very reluctantly as part of a series of important compromises.'"[11]
Attempt to remove from ballot
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced in late June that he wanted to remove Proposition 18 from the November 2010 ballot. As of mid-July, he had secured the cooperation of three of the four top leaders of the California State Legislature, with John Perez, the Speaker of the California State Assembly, still mulling it over.[11]
Removing Proposition 18 from the ballot will require a 2/3rds supermajority vote vote in each chamber of the California State Legislature.
Options
Although removing Proposition 18 from the 2010 ballot with the intention of putting it on the 2012 ballot is one option under consideration, there are others as well, which include:
- Renegotiating the scope of the bond
- Altering the priority and dollars amounts going to various projects if the bond is approved
- Leaving Proposition 18 on the 2012 ballot but cutting the amount requested
- Scraping it altogether.
Varying views
Paul Tebble of Friends of the River says, "The right thing to do is remove it entirely and redo it at a much lower amount. Water projects that only benefit a small number of people need to disappear."[11]
Jim Earp of the Alliance for Jobs said that his group has met with the governor to discuss removing the package from the ballot. The Alliance for Jobs is an organization whose members include contractors and construction workers. Earp said, "After discussion with the governor and legislative leadership, it was kind of the consensus, given the contentious political climate over the budget and a lot of other political issues floating around this November, to wait until the message on the water bond could be heard by voters."[11]
Lois Wolk, a California State Senator, said, "I think it should be repealed and revised, and let the new governor and Legislature consider it. The first question to ask is, ‘What is the purpose of this bond? If it is the restoration of the health of the delta, then we ought to focus on those projects that reduce the reliance of Southern California and the Bay Area on the delta. My feeling is there should be a narrowed bond, and we should combine that with the $4.1 billion in bonds that were authorized but not sold from Proposition 1E."[11]
For-profit ownership
One part of Proposition 18 that may be removed is a provision that would allow private companies to own/control dams built with Proposition 18 money.
The for-profit ownership clause says that joint-power authorities created with Proposition 18 month "may include in their membership governmental and nongovernmental partners that are not located within their respective hydrologic regions in financing the surface storage projects" and that these authorities would "own, govern, manage and operate a surface storage project."[12]
In arguing for this provision to be removed from Proposition 18, Carolee Kreiger, president of the California Water Impact Network, said, "This is taxpayers subsidizing corporate agribusiness on the backs of teachers, firefighters, nurses and police."[12]
See also
External links
Basic information
- Text of Senate Bill 2 (2009)
- Ballot label
- Ballot title and summary
- Legislative analysis
- Argument in favor, submitted for California Voter Guide
- Rebuttal to argument in favor for Voter Guide
- Argument against for Voter Guide
- Rebuttal to argument against for Voter Guide
- Text of proposed law for Voter Guide
Support
- Water for California, campaign website supporting the measure
- Water for California on Facebook
- List of supporters
- "Alliance for Clean Water and New Jobs" campaign finance reports
- "Conservation Action Fund" campaign finance reports
Opposition
- No Water Bond, campaign website opposing the measure
- Blog of the "No Water Bond" campaign
- Facebook page of the "No Water Bond" campaign
- List of opponents
- "Committee to Oppose Statewide Water Bonds" campaign finance reports
References
- ↑ Los Angeles Times, "California water bond pushed back to 2012", August 10, 2010
- ↑ Los Angeles Times, "Schwarzenegger wants $11-billion water bond off the November ballot", June 30, 2010
- ↑ San Diego Union Tribune, "Water bond now on the bubble", July 19, 2010
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Mercury News, "Californians asked to spend more during unprecedented spree of water spending", November 23, 2009
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Mercury News, "Let the water wars begin", December 22, 2009
- ↑ Mercury News, "Another high-speed rail vote may be needed", January 19, 2010
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 San Francisco Chronicle, "Water bond offers nearly $2 billion in 'pork'", November 15, 2009
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Lake County News, "North Coast legislators weigh in on state water package", November 27, 2009
- ↑ The Record.Net, "Opponents: poll shows water bond in trouble", February 20, 2010
- ↑ Sacramento Bee, "Excerpt of January 2010 Tulchin Research Poll on the Water Bond", February 8, 2010
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Capitol Weekly, "Water bond’s ripples awash in the Capitol", July 15, 2010
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 San Francisco Chronicle, "Bill seeks to strike clause from water bond", June 19, 2010
