Proposition 4 defies easy categorization. Is it a water bonus? A climate resilience bonus? A Christmas tree with environmental gifts for public and private interests across the state?
The answer is yes. The $10 billion state bond is all that. The disparate expenses under this proposal 15,000 words of text They are a reflection of the comprehensive nature of climate change, but also of the political agreement necessary in the state Legislature for this measure to be included on the November 5 ballot.
Despite some concerns about the process, we believe voters should vote yes on Proposition 4. In the long run, investing now to protect against the growing and inevitable impacts of climate change will save the state and Californians.
Ideally, these investments could be made without financing, but state revenues are too volatile to provide a constant source of income. A few years ago, California began allocating tens of billions of dollars of its huge budget surplus to climate programs, only to cut some of those same programs a few years later when the state fell into deficit. California's ability to prepare for and respond to the effects of climate should not be captive to the state's boom-and-bust budget cycle.
The bulk of the spending, $3.8 billion, goes to water projects, such as storage, reuse and recycling, cleaning up contaminated aquifers, and protecting against droughts and floods.
The remainder will fund a range of climate, energy, conservation and agricultural projects, including $1.5 billion for wildfire prevention and forest resilience, $1.2 billion to protect the coast from sea level rise and $1.2 billion dollars to conserve and restore habitat. There is $850 million to help build offshore wind turbines, transmission lines and battery storage, $700 million to improve and expand parks, museums, zoos and aquariums, $450 million for extreme heat and $300 million for agricultural sustainability projects.
Proposition 4 will help California be proactive in the face of this slowly unfolding disaster, investing now to protect communities from climate impacts that are worsening as global warming accelerates. And there is no doubt that the vast majority of the spending on this broad package is necessary and valuable.
Like any large public spending plan, there are elements that seem tangential to the bond. In this case, we highlight the $20 million for marquees, tables and other equipment for farmers markets and $15 million for vans to transport farm workers. But those items are small relative to overall spending that is focused primarily on worthwhile projects that taxpayers will end up paying for one way or another.
Opponents, including state Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-Santee) and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, say it is irresponsible for the state to borrow money to replenish programs cut for the budget and that the $400 million in Annual debt payments will tie lawmakers down. ' hands to respond to other priorities in the future.
In a perfect world, that may be true. But it is even more irresponsible to entrust the responsibility of protecting California from the climate crisis to future generations.
The last environmental bond California voters approved was Proposition 68 in June 2018, but that $4.1 billion investment was focused more narrowly on parks, water and coastal resiliency projects, and nearly all of it has been spent or allocated. The last state water bond approved by voters was a decade ago, and some of the money is still being allocated. In November 2018, voters wisely rejected Proposition 3an $8.8 billion water bond that would have forced state taxpayers to pay for projects that should be financed by private interests.
Lawmakers who negotiated Proposition 4 say they learned from that measure's defeat and kept the pork to a minimum. Still, we hope that legislators will be more responsible with public money. When they come back in a few years with another climate bond, as we can almost certainly expect, it will have to be more agile and focused, without opportunistic giveaways that erode the trust of Californians.
But the few concerns about the bond are dwarfed by the much more pressing threat posed by climate change. California cannot afford to wait. Voting yes on Proposition 4 will help California weather the climate crisis that grows more severe each year.
