Vote Yes.

tldr: Proposition A is a charter amendment that would reduce the number of boards and commissions written into the City Charter from 55 to 38. Nine would be moved into the Municipal Code, where the Board of Supervisors can modify them in the future, and eight would be eliminated or merged. The measure also requires a task force to review commissions every 10 years, changes some departmental operations and reporting requirements, alters how the Board of Supervisors must approve settlements or dismissals of legal proceedings recommended by the City Attorney, and removes provisions allowing disciplinary action against non-SF Police and Fire striking employees. 

Why Yes?

San Francisco's Charter has become a thicket of commissions, reporting requirements, and procedural rules for a city that no longer exists. About 73 percent of San Francisco's departments are fixed in the Charter, a substantially larger share than in the peer cities studied by the city's Charter Reform Working Group. Because only voters can amend the Charter, even obvious housekeeping, like eliminating a commission for a department that has been eliminated or folded into another, requires a citywide election. The result is a government where bodies outlive their purpose and nobody can easily retire them. 

Opponents, including the SF Green Party, argue that Proposition A lowers public oversight and participation. But the measure on the ballot is far more modest than they suggest. Proposition A adopts only part of the restructuring considered by the Commission Streamlining Task Force, which suggested a considerably broader set of changes. The commissions Proposition A removes are only ones that are idle or redundant. 

The fiscal impact is modest. According to the City Controller, eliminating just three bodies – the two Public Works-related commissions and the Street Artists and Craftsmen Examiners Advisory Committee – would save an estimated $365 thousand to $450 thousand annually. These are small numbers in a budget of San Francisco’s size, but the larger point is about whether the city can govern itself clearly, with a manageable number of bodies that residents can follow and hold accountable.

Taken on its merits, Proposition A is a sensible cleanup of an overgrown Charter, with real but modest savings and safeguards that keep the most important oversight bodies in place.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition B creates a “public bank” – a financial institution that can borrow and lend money like a private bank, except this one would be a semi-independent organ of San Francisco’s municipal government, initially capitalized with your tax dollars, and not-for-profit.

Why No?

Proposition B’s proponents say that it gives San Francisco the ability to borrow money and use it to fund and share profits with private businesses that provide important public services, but are not economically attractive enough to get loans from traditional banks. 

But San Francisco can already do all that – and already does. 

Among other avenues, the City can issue loans through the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development and it can assume debts via general obligation bonds.

Proposition B is, therefore, not about giving San Francisco financial tools it currently lacks; it’s about creating a new, riskier, less accountable slush fund for politically well-connected and questionably viable businesses to access your tax dollars.

Lending is uniquely vulnerable to corruption and malfeasance, creating opportunities for favoritism in selecting recipients, setting interest rates, fixing repayment terms, and extending, restructuring, or forgiving delinquencies. That’s why the City only extends loans today via narrowly tailored, closely monitored, and publicly accountable programs.

And borrowing is inherently risky. In an economic downturn, the City could find itself unable to meet current debt obligations – a condition more commonly known as bankruptcy. That’s why San Francisco’s general obligation bonds require two public hearings, two-thirds voter approval, and a Board of Supervisors authorization before issuance.

Proposition B would create a parallel lending and borrowing infrastructure that leverages your tax dollars (the City Controller estimates initial capitalization for the bank costing between $310 to $460 million over eight years) and San Francisco’s financial stability without the safeguards discussed above. 

There were 571 insured bank failures between 2001 and 2026, and 414 between 2008 and 2011 alone. Twenty-one percent of new financial institutions fail in their first year, and almost half fail in their first five years. Say what you will about the executives of those institutions, we’re skeptical that Supervisor Chyanne Chen (this proposition’s sponsor) and her progressive fellow travelers can succeed where so many others with so much more expertise and experience have failed.cription text goes here

Vote No.

tldr: San Francisco voters established the Housing Trust Fund via ballot initiative in 2012. The Fund is charged with creating, acquiring, and rehabilitating affordable rental and ownership housing. Proposition C would extend the life of the Fund by 15 years until 2058, increase the required allocation of money to the Fund in San Francisco’s annual budget, expand the types of housing it can support, and expand eligibility for homebuyers’ downpayment loan assistance from households making 120 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) to those making 200 percent of AMI.

Why No?

Building homes to meet demand is the single best way to make housing more affordable, and it’s not even close. Evidence from around the country, around the state, and right here in San Francisco shows that all other methods – from taxing vacancies to imposing rent controls to banning rentals – have only led to fewer, worse housing options at higher prices, hitting the working class and growing families hardest. 

Important work has been done to reduce administrative and legal hurdles preventing certain kinds of new homes from being constructed in certain neighborhoods. But zoning and permitting reform are already showing diminishing marginal returns. Just because a developer can build housing somewhere doesn’t make that project economically viable. That requires lowering development costs by doing things like making it legal to build pre-fabricated housing, eliminating stairwell mandates, and ending CEQA abuse. 

Proposition C’s backers know this, but are unwilling to take the steps necessary to realize it. Why? As Robert Conquest once observed, “any organization not explicitly right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.” Thus, formerly pro-housing groups like YIMBY Action (one of Proposition C’s endorsers) have been effectively subsumed into San Francisco’s left-wing ecosystem, within which they are constrained from doing anything that would upset one of the Democratic Party’s principal financial patrons: trade unions. These unions oppose the aforementioned cost-lowering measures and others because they would reduce their ability to extract various concessions from developers involving pay, working hours, and even hiring non-union labor. In the absence of a better alternative, left-wing groups who publicly claim to be pro-housing must resort to flogging failed programs like the Housing Trust Fund.

And failed it has. Since the Fund's creation, the cost to build a single affordable unit in San Francisco has roughly doubled, running close to $1 million per unit today. It has barely made a dent in the city’s housing crisis, with local media describing it as a “letdown” that has “yielded little.” As a reward, Proposition C would double the Fund’s size, lock it in for 30 more years, and stretch it thinner by offering downpayment assistance to households making up to $350 thousand dollars annually and allowing tax dollars to go towards “social housing” (a rebranding of public housing), and co-ops. Meanwhile, nothing in the measure requires a single additional unit to actually be built, nor any cost-control target to be achieved. 

What’s more, what evidence is there that the City of San Francisco is a competent housing portfolio allocator? If the aim is to incentivize affordable housing projects by artificially juicing demand, then why not simply make vouchers available to the households who would otherwise qualify under this legislation? Surely, each family knows much more about the type of housing it needs, at what price, and in which neighborhood than an office of Housing Trust Fund bureaucrats trying to guess the same for thousands of San Franciscans. One is reminded of Soviet apparatchiks attempting to guess how many size nine shoes would be needed in the coming year by the citizens of Moscow.

Vote Yes.

tldr: Prop D increases the number of signatures necessary to place a local measure on the ballot via the initiative process from 2 percent to 8 percent of registered voters. It would also remove the ability of the mayor to place a local measure on the ballot and increase the number of supervisors needed to do the same from four to six. 

Why Yes?

San Francisco’s signature-gathering threshold for a voter-initiated ballot measure is unusually low compared to cities like Sacramento, Anaheim, Oakland, and San Diego, which require signatures from at least 10 percent of registered voters. What’s more: Of the ten largest cities in California, San Francisco is the only one to allow a minority of its legislators to place ordinances on the ballot.

The result is that voters must contend with a tsunami of ballot measures each election. In November 2024, San Francisco’s ballot included 13 local measures, compared with just five in Los Angeles and three in San Diego. Long ballots increase voter fatigue and confusion, and discourage participation. 

Consider this proposition itself: To vote intelligently on it, you’re going to have to wade through a massive, multi-page ballot that requires a significant investment of time and effort (the fact that you’re reading this voter guide confirms the point).

Furthermore, our current ballot measure process enables small groups of politicians and activists to circumvent traditional legislative avenues. Call us crazy, but we think legislators should be legislating, not passing off hard decisions to the electorate. 

Forcing elected officials to engage with each other on critical issues will be more likely to lead to negotiated outcomes that favor moderation, as well as the kind of serious feasibility analyses that the legislative process encourages. 

While opponents voice a legitimate concern that Proposition D will shutter the ability of underrepresented groups like conservatives to place measures on the ballot, that concern is not (at least for now) supported by the historical record. Nearly every single ballot measure that Proposition D would have precluded over the past 10 years was backed, rather, by progressives. 

Voting yes on Prop D means reducing an unreasonable burden on our electorate and encouraging lawmakers to come to the table to find workable, common-sense compromises that move our city forward.

Vote Yes.

tldr: Proposition E is a Charter amendment that consolidates San Francisco's fragmented $5 billion municipal procurement system under the City Administrator, updates Board contract approval thresholds from $10 million to $25 million, and extends the City Administrator's term from five years to 10 years.

Why Yes?

San Francisco’s current municipal contracting system is a textbook example of fragmented, bloated local governance where everyone controls part of the process and no one is accountable for the outcome. Handling more than $5 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts every year, procurement is currently splintered across dozens of departments and major independent commissions – including the MTA, PUC, Airport, Port, and Arts commissions – each enforcing their own idiosyncratic rules and operating under distinct oversight frameworks.

Supervisors, the Mayor's Office staff, and independent boards have spent decades piling on overlapping and inconsistent procurement mandates. The resulting administrative labyrinth generates costly delays, inflates vendor costs, and inherently favors well-connected insider firms sophisticated enough to navigate the red tape.

Proposition E tackles this structural paralysis through four commonsense reforms:

• Centralizes standard contracting rules: It extends the City Administrator's authority over procurement and technology standards to major independent departments – like the MTA, PUC, Port, Airport, and Arts departments – creating one consistent, citywide rulebook.

• Updates obsolete legislative thresholds: The Charter’s current $10 million threshold for Board contract approval was set in 1997. Decades of inflation have dragged routine operational agreements under legislative review.

• Establishes single-point operational responsibility: It gives the City Administrator exclusive authority to draft and implement unified procurement ordinances and regulations. While the Board retains a 60-day veto window to reject proposals, supervisors cannot amend or rewrite ordinances to insert pet mandates or favor specific interest groups.

• Protects professional continuity: It extends the City Administrator’s term from five to 10 years. Overhauling thousands of municipal agreements and unwinding decades of bureaucratic inertia requires long-term leadership that outlasts election cycles and resists short-term political pressures.

Vote Yes.

tl;dr: Proposition F would change the City Charter in four significant ways. First, it would allow the mayor to reorganize most city departments by moving duties between them or merging them. Second, it would give the mayor substantially greater authority to appoint and remove executive-branch department heads. For several departments – including Planning, Building Inspection, Public Works, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Small Business, and Entertainment – the mayor could appoint the department head directly. For many others, commissions would retain a role in nominating candidates, but the mayor would have greater control over selection and removal. Third, most commissioners would serve at the pleasure of whoever appointed them, so the mayor could remove the mayor's appointees and the Board of Supervisors its appointees. Finally, Proposition F would also repeal a 90s-era ban on the mayor hiring "deputy mayors" to supervise groups of departments.

Why Yes?

When a City department fails, residents should be able to hold the mayor accountable. Yet Mayor Lurie says he can hire and fire only about six percent of the city's department heads, and that replacing a failing one can take six to twelve months. Much of that limitation stems from Charter provisions giving commissions roles in selecting or removing department heads. As former City Controller Ed Harrington put it, “If you want the mayor to be held responsible, you have to give them authority to make decisions.”

Opponents, including Small Business Forward, Democratic Socialists SF, and former Supervisor Dean Preston say commissions exist to check the mayor, that Proposition F removes essential checks and balances, and that the power to remove commissioners without cause could expose commissioners and other officials to politically motivated firings. There are real risks in any system that concentrates authority, but the answer is not the system San Francisco has today, which diffuses authority so broadly that no one can be held responsible when things go wrong.

Proposition F's reforms are modest. The Board of Supervisors can still remove its own appointees just as the mayor can remove the mayor's, and the Ethics Commission, Civil Service Commission, and Board of Appeals keep their current protections. Moreover, the powers it confers are not unassailable: voters can elect a new mayor, the Board of Supervisors can block reorganizations, and the Charter can be re-amended. 

San Francisco's Charter is the longest of any major American city. We don’t suffer from too little oversight in San Francisco; we suffer from a system in which authority is so scattered that residents can't tell who is responsible when a department fails and – in any case – our elected representatives are not empowered to replace the responsible party.

Vote Yes.

tldr: Upper Great Highway (UGH) is a four-lane thoroughfare running alongside Ocean Beach from Golden Gate Park down to the zoo. Long a major traffic artery for westside commuters, it was closed to cars at the beginning of the pandemic. In late 2021, a “compromise” arrangement was announced that opened UGH to cars from Monday to Friday. In 2024, voters passed Proposition K, which revoked the compromise, again closed UGH to cars entirely, and authorized Sunset Dunes Park to be built on the thoroughfare instead. Proposition G would materially restore the compromise arrangement, opening UGH to cars on weekdays again.

Why Yes?

As a matter of good governance, political actors should be punished when they lie to the electorate. And the backers of Sunset Dunes Park, first in promoting Proposition K and now in opposing Proposition G, have conducted one of the most shameless misinformation campaigns in modern San Francisco history.

Briones strongly favors urbanist developments like parks, bicycle infrastructure, and pedestrian promenades. We also strongly believe that the success of urbanist projects relies on making them safe, affordable, and pleasant, not on making it harder to drive cars. 

People like and often need to drive cars. For urbanism to succeed, it must take that fact into account and not advance projects that cause significant pain to large numbers of drivers in order to build adult playgrounds for a handful of bicyclists.

Which brings us to Sunset Dunes, a “park” that is really just a two-mile stretch of asphalt dotted with “art” of the kind and quality you’d see at a junior college exhibition or a Cost Plus World Market. On any given day it’s almost entirely empty, which is unsurprising given that no one wants to stroll down a barren highway when there is a parallel-running beach and a boardwalk for pedestrians 20 feet away on one side, and an elevated trail for bicyclists 20 feet away on the other side.

Why, then, are Sunset Dunes’ backers and the City itself claiming that the park sees 8,900 daily visits on weekends and 4,400 on weekdays? Simply put: They are lying. The City’s visitation data relies on electronic sensors, which record every time someone crosses a sensor as a “visit.” That means that if I enter and exit the park at the same location (as most people do) and cross the same sensor twice, then that is recorded as two visits. It also means that anyone who crosses Sunset Dunes to go to Ocean Beach (which dwarfs the park in visitation numbers) is counted as having visited Sunset Dunes. Finally – and this is due to an affirmative choice by SF Parks & Rec, not due to the limitations of sensor technology – mass events are not filtered out of the visit tallies. For example, Sunset Dunes recorded its highest number of visitors on February 1, 2026 – when almost 10,000 runners traversed it as part of the San Francisco Half Marathon course.

This pattern of deception extends back to the campaign for Proposition K in 2024, which heavily featured statements implying that UGH was going to be closed soon anyway due to the need for a seawall project to reverse shoreline retreat and erosion along Ocean Beach, as well as sand accumulation on UGH itself. Thus, the proposition’s backers argued, the choice for voters wasn’t really between a park and a highway – it was between a park and nothing. In truth, the seawall project is planned for the UGH Extension, a strip of road running south of Sloat Boulevard and less used by UGH commuters already. Tellingly, none of UGH Extension is now part of, nor was ever intended to be, part of Sunset Dunes.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition H imposes a 15-year parcel tax raising $177 million annually for Muni, but fails to demand binding cost controls, fare enforcement, or operational efficiency in return. Taxpayers should not be locked into a 15-year tax hike to subsidize an agency that refuses to enforce fare compliance or mandate structural spending reductions.

Why No?

San Francisco’s buses broadcast a feeble reminder to riders: “Fare Required.” City Hall needs its own: “Fiscal Responsibility Required.”

Proposition H would impose a new parcel tax on San Francisco property owners for 15 years starting in July 2027, with automatic annual inflation adjustments. The City Controller estimates the tax will extract roughly $177 million in additional revenue annually at startup, while costing taxpayers $2 million to $3 million initially and between $4 million and $6 million every single year thereafter just to administer and collect the tax.

While Muni provides an essential public service, taxpayers should not be bullied into propping up an agency with a questionable spending history and an ongoing refusal to enforce operational discipline. Proposition H falls short of basic fiscal accountability in two critical ways.

First, it lacks any fare enforcement provisions. During the pandemic, the SFMTA reassigned inspectors and adopted a lax approach to fare enforcement, causing evasion citations to plummet to zero. Unsurprisingly, fare evasion among riders surged from roughly 12 percent pre-COVID to over 20 percent by 2024. While the agency has recently renewed public awareness efforts, Proposition H contains no specific fare enforcement provisions, no inspection requirements, no collection targets, and no condition linking tax revenue to improved compliance.

Second, its “efficiency review” is toothless. Proposition H purports to control costs by requiring a third-party efficiency review by April 2028. However, Proposition H sets no dollar savings targets, requires no adoption of the audit's recommendations, and does not condition ongoing tax distributions on achieving actual savings. A requirement to identify cost-saving measures without a mandate to implement them is meaningless.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition I redirects $120 million annually from the General Fund into housing programs, becoming San Francisco's 24th voter-mandated set-aside.

Why No?

Contrary to its misleading title, the “Affordable Housing Guarantee Act” guarantees a massive, permanent payout to housing organizations without guaranteeing a single unit of new affordable housing. Proposition I would redirect approximately $120 million annually from the General Fund into specified housing and tenant-assistance programs, all without setting a minimum target for newly constructed homes or establishing a completion deadline.

San Francisco simply cannot afford another permanent set-aside in its budget. The City Controller’s recent analysis projects looming General Fund deficits of $741.7 million in fiscal year 2028–29 and $1.1 billion the following year. Proposition I would immediately widen those projected deficits by roughly $120 million each year, cannibalizing revenue desperately needed for public safety, infrastructure, and essential city services. Rigid set-asides already lock up approximately 30 percent of General Fund revenue, crippling the City’s ability to adapt to economic downturns or balance its budget responsibly.

While Proposition I mandates basic annual audits and reporting, it says nothing about construction targets, completion deadlines, or per-unit cost caps. With local affordable housing developments frequently ballooning to $1 million per unit, taxpayers deserve concrete accountability rather than a blank check.

A permanent funding mandate should come with measurable expectations. Before surrendering to yet another inflexible budget obligation, voters should demand a credible delivery plan: How many new homes will be built, by when, and at what cost?

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition J eliminates San Francisco's longstanding transfer tax exemption for foreclosed properties, subjecting distressed real estate transfers to the City's high real property transfer tax. 

Why No?

Under current law, when a borrower defaults and a property is foreclosed upon or transferred to a creditor to satisfy a debt, the transaction is exempt from the City's Real Property Transfer Tax. Proposition J removes this exemption, subjecting foreclosed properties to transfer tax rates that reach up to 6 percent for high-value real estate.

Piling transfer taxes onto properties undergoing foreclosure is flawed policy for three reasons:

• Taxing Financial Failure: Transfer taxes are designed as a levy on voluntary real estate sales where a seller realizes a gain. Foreclosures, by contrast, occur when property owners, small businesses, or housing providers suffer severe financial collapse. Imposing a transfer tax on a foreclosure sale extracts revenue from a defaulted transaction, further penalizing distressed borrowers and lenders.

• Deepens Commercial Real Estate Distress: San Francisco’s commercial sector is already struggling with elevated vacancy rates, tumbling valuations, and debt defaults. Applying the highest transfer tax rates in California to foreclosed commercial buildings discourages new investors from acquiring distressed assets, reinvesting capital, and bringing vacant properties back into productive use.

• Creates Prolonged Inefficiency: Adding a tax penalty to foreclosure transactions increases the friction and cost of resolving bad loans. Higher transaction costs drag out foreclosure proceedings, delay property turnarounds, and depress surrounding property values across the city.

San Francisco should be fostering economic recovery and property market stabilization, not inventing new ways to tax its residents.

Vote No.

tldr: Last year, California state legislators approved SB 63, which placed a measure on the November 2026 ballot levying an additional 0.5 percent sales tax in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties, and an additional one percent sales tax in San Francisco County. Proceeds from the tax would be used to finance a variety of transit operations and other program expenses incurred by BART, Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, and other public transit operators in the Bay Area. 

SB 63 also provided that if voters qualified an identical measure on the November 2026 ballot via the initiative process, it would replace the one put forth by the legislature. This provision was made because certain taxes levied by voter initiative only require a simple majority to pass, whereas those levied by the legislature require a two-thirds majority. The RTM on the ballot is the voter initiative version and, therefore, will pass if approved by a simple majority.

Why No?

Public transit in the Bay Area has always relied on subsidies to make ends meet. Its pre-pandemic budget formula, however, is no longer viable. Ridership has plummeted over the past few years while operating costs have skyrocketed. To save the Bay Area’s various transit operators – in particular, BART – from bankruptcy, the federal government stepped in with a temporary grant program. That program has now expired, and BART faces a recurring budget deficit of $400 million per year starting in fiscal year 2027. 

The RTM represents California Democrats’ stock answer to every problem: more taxes, more spending. This approach will yield the same result it always does: the legislature will come back to voters in 3-5 years asking for more money, because none of BART’s structural problems (or those of the other operators who benefit from the RTM) are being addressed. 

First, BART ridership is still only 60 percent of what it was in 2019. While many hoped that ridership would rebound after the pandemic, lower ticket sales now appear to be a secular trend resulting from the proliferation of remote work arrangements and the increasing affordability of alternative commuter options. Fewer stations, fewer trains, and fewer hours – the parade of horribles that the RTM’s backers claim will result from voters rejecting the measure – may actually be more appropriate to Bay Area commuters’ needs over the next few decades. 

The legislature could have taken this into account by proposing a short-term emergency tax, during which commuter patterns and BART’s future role in them could be evaluated. Instead, it proposed a tax levy that doesn’t expire until 2041 – the distant future in commuter technology terms. Under the RTM, taxpayers could be handing BART hundreds of millions of dollars annually well into the 2030s just to operate shiny trains delivering no one to nowhere. 

Despite serving half as many riders, BART’s operating expenses are up over 10 percent in real dollars since 2019. Over the past decade, BART employee headcount has risen by almost 30 percent and total employee spending has almost doubled. Labor costs claim more than $830 million of the system’s operating budget of $1.2 billion.

BART has the highest cost per ride among the seven largest local heavy rail systems in the US, the third highest cost per vehicle revenue hour, and the third highest cost per vehicle in operation. The RTM lacks any real mechanism to bring these costs down. Tax revenues are distributed to the transit operators before any comprehensive efficiency review is completed, and the RTM’s mandated audit program and oversight committees are to be conducted and staffed primarily by employees of the operators themselves or those they hire or appoint.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition 1 authorizes $11.25 billion in state bonds for housing – costing the General Fund $500 to $600 million annually for 25 years – without setting production targets, per-unit cost caps, or regulatory reforms. 

Why No?

Proposition 1 asks Californians to approve $11.25 billion in general obligation bonds ($10 billion for housing programs and $1.25 billion for self-funding veterans’ home loans) without establishing a single production target, per-unit cost ceiling, or cap on administrative spending. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), servicing the $10 billion housing debt will drain $500 million to $600 million from the state General Fund every single year for 25 years.

While funding affordable rental, student, farmworker, and tribal housing sounds like a worthy goal, taking on decades of public debt without fixing the root causes of California's housing crisis is fiscally irresponsible.

California’s housing shortage is aggravated by government-created costs. A 2025 RAND study revealed that California’s market-rate housing production costs per rentable square foot are 2.3 times higher than in Texas, projects take over 22 months longer to complete, and local impact fees average $29,000 per unit compared to under $1,000 in Texas. Proposition 1 requires zero reforms to approval timelines, municipal fees, or rigid labor and design standards that inflate building costs.

Moreover, our state’s experience with housing bonds demonstrates a massive gap between political hype and real-world results. In 2018, voters approved the $2 billion “No Place Like Home” bond after proponents promised 20,000 permanent supportive housing units. Six years later, fewer than 1,800 units had actually been completed.

California must fix the broken regulations that make housing prohibitively expensive before committing taxpayers to another massive borrowing program.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition 2 is a constitutional amendment that changes the rules governing the state's main budget reserve. The reserve is fed by a formula that sets aside 1.5 percent of estimated General Fund revenue each year – half of which, until 2039-2040, goes into a rainy day fund and half of which is used for specified debts and other obligations. The reserve also receives a share of any capital-gains tax revenue that exceeds eight percent of the General Fund. Starting in 2027-28, Proposition 2 would require the portion of capital gains exceeding 10 percent of General Fund revenue to count at one and a half times its value, forcing the state to save more in boom years. Deposits would also stop counting against the state's constitutional spending limit (the Gann limit) until the year the money is withdrawn and spent. Withdrawals would still require the Governor to declare a budget emergency, and the Legislature could take out no more than half the balance in a year, unless money was withdrawn the year before. 

Why No?

California relies heavily on capital gains taxes, so the state swings between large surpluses and large deficits. A larger reserve is a reasonable way to smooth that out, and the idea that the state should save more in good years is hard to argue with. Voters who want a stronger rainy day fund are right to want one. The problem is that Proposition 2 doesn't deliver it.

A rainy day fund is only as good as the rules that govern taking money out of it. Today, the Governor can declare a “budget emergency,” and a majority of the Legislature can ratify it. For example, state pension expert David Crane notes that Governor Newsom's budgets drew $4.9 billion and then $7.1 billion from the fund while state tax revenue was growing, simply because spending had risen faster than revenue.

Proposition 2 does nothing about such blatant abuses – and even streamlines them by allowing the governor's budget revision to serve as the emergency proclamation itself. The result is a reserve that is twice as large but no harder to raid, which doesn't protect against a downturn so much as it creates a larger pot for the next round of spending growth.

The measure also weakens one of the few constitutional brakes on state spending. The Gann limit caps how much the state can spend in boom years, and when revenue exceeds it two years in a row, the excess is split between schools and taxpayer rebates. Gann limit caps were one of the mechanisms triggering stimulus checks in 2022. Under Proposition 2, however, deposits would not count against the limit until the money is pulled out and spent, which keeps the state further from the limit in the years it saves most. Supporters say that is simply good accounting, but it means taxpayer rebates are less likely in good years, and the Legislature gets more room to keep both a larger reserve and continue higher spending.

None of this means California shouldn't save more. It just means voters have a better option than approving a change that doubles the fund but not the discipline. The Legislature can return with a measure that pairs a larger fund with real limits on withdrawals so that the money is available when an economic downturn hits and not when a budget simply can’t sustain increased spending.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition 3 permanently extends the 2012 income tax hike on high earners due to expire in 2030. 

Why No?

As Milton Friedman once said, “there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.” In 2012, voters approved a “temporary” income tax increase; Proposition 3 would make it permanent. While Sacramento lawmakers have become accustomed to spending this additional revenue stream, there is no evidence that it has improved California’s fiscal health or its public services.

Voters should reject this proposition. Stanford University economists estimate that California’s elevated rates have encouraged high earners to relocate and reduced reported income among those who stay. Since 2018, the resulting erosion of the state's tax base has cost California more in lost revenue than the higher rates actually collect.

And while proponents of Proposition 3 claim that higher taxes lead to better schools, California’s experience shows otherwise: Average 8th-grade reading and math scores were lower in 2024 than in 2013, shortly after the temporary tax increases took effect. Instead of funding classroom instruction or smaller class sizes, an estimated $8.5 billion of the added revenue between 2015 and 2023 was swallowed by rising teacher union pension obligations.

The tax’s impacts are felt beyond the “wealthiest 2 percent” that it purportedly targets. Because the federal primary-residence capital gains exclusions have not been adjusted for inflation since 1997, a longtime homeowner or small business owner selling a lifetime asset can be temporarily pushed into top tax brackets during a single transaction.

A “No” vote does not immediately strip funding from state budgets – existing tax rates remain fully in effect through 2030. Rejecting Prop 3 gives lawmakers six years to reform spending and protect the tax base rather than making a temporary tax permanent simply because Sacramento got hooked on revenue.

Vote Yes.

tldr (adapted from the California state voter guide): Current law prohibits state and local governments from using public funds for election campaigns except in charter cities and counties like San Francisco. Proposition 4 repeals that prohibition and allows governments to establish public campaign financing programs for candidates who agree to specified spending limits and meet eligibility criteria. Aside from local jurisdictions’ direct financing costs, the measure would cost the state a few hundred thousand dollars each year in administrative expenses.

Why Yes?

Ensuring free, fair, and functional elections is an essential duty of government. Modest public financing programs of the kind that could be introduced under Proposition 4 would help California localities fulfill that duty by introducing more competition into the electoral process and empowering citizen-candidates lacking institutional and special interest support.

This is uniquely important in California in 2026, where elections are dominated by a Democratic Party machine beholden to public sector union interests. Republican donors and institutions have largely disavowed support for conservative candidates and causes in the state, and the California GOP is essentially non-operative as a fundraising organ. Public financing is the only remaining avenue for Republicans to mount credible campaigns, spread the conservative message, and register new voters. 

While Briones shares the concerns of some taxpayer watchdog and conservative organizations who oppose this proposition, we believe they are unaware of or ignoring these fundamental facts on the ground – facts that are all too evident to those of us engaged in grassroots organizing.

While public financing isn’t always an appropriate or desirable feature of a political system, here and now, it very much is.

Vote Yes.

tldr (adapted from the California state voter guide):  Under current law, voters elect replacement candidates at the same time as the recall election. Proposition 5 instead fills recall vacancies by subsequent special election or appointment.

Why Yes?

Opponents of this proposition mount a strong argument: Why should California voters who choose to remove an elected official from office be stuck with a replacement appointed by that official’s colleagues, and why should voters have to pay for yet another statewide election to pick the official’s permanent replacement when the two questions (recall and permanent replacement) can easily be combined on one ballot?

The reason we’re tentatively endorsing this proposition isn’t because we’re persuaded by the proponents’ arguments (which essentially reduce to a hand-wavey critique of first-past-the-post voting systems), but because we think it will increase the chances that recalls will be successful, and that this will impose discipline on elected officials – particularly Democrats – and incentivize them to govern from the center.

If Proposition 5 is approved, California’s recall process would mirror San Francisco’s. As we’ve seen over the past 5 years, San Francisco voters have proven quite successful in leveraging recalls – or the threat thereof – to cut the legs out from Leftist pols who ignore their constituents. One of the under-discussed and underappreciated factors that has contributed to this success is that it’s easier to get voters to vote against something than it is to get them to vote for an alternative. 

If San Francisco’s recall process worked like California’s, moderate activists in 2022 would have had to finance not only a campaign to remove DA Chesa Boudin from office, but another campaign for a replacement candidate, also; Boudin could then spend months attacking that other candidate instead of having to defend his own record; and spoilers could have entered the race, forcing the moderate’s favorite replacement to have to allocate resources away from attacking Boudin.

In short, while San Francisco still has a lot of problems, we think its trajectory is more positive than it has been in five years and that our recall process has been a key factor in the city’s turnaround. California could do worse than taking its cues from us.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition 37 authorizes up to $25 billion in revenue bonds to finance state-backed second mortgages for buyers putting down as little as three percent cash. 

Why No?

Proposition 37 would establish a state-administered second-mortgage program funded by up to $25 billion in revenue bonds. Under the scheme, buyers of newly built homes could contribute as little as three percent of their own funds while borrowing up to 17 percent through the state program and financing the remaining 80 percent via a primary mortgage.

Instead of encouraging families to borrow up to 97 percent of a home's purchase price to cope with hyper-inflated real estate, California must address the underlying government mandates that make housing expensive to build in the first place. As we’ve noted elsewhere in this voter guide, a 2025 RAND study revealed that California’s market-rate housing production costs are 2.3 times higher than in Texas, projects take 22 months longer to complete, and local impact fees average $29,000 per unit compared to under $1,000 in Texas.

Proposition 37 also fails to establish an interest rate ceiling. Because these second mortgages rank behind primary lenders in foreclosure, bond investors will demand higher yields to compensate for default risk – translating into elevated borrowing costs that undermine the program's intended benefits.

At the end of the day, California cannot simply borrow its way out of a housing shortage. Authorizing a massive $25 billion expansion of state mortgage lending offers no clear evidence that state agencies can price risk better or deliver superior terms than existing private options, while adding substantial administrative complexity.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition 38 authorizes the state to issue $8.4 billion in general obligation bonds to research diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, and heart disease. Half the money would go to a single nonprofit research institute, selected by the California Department of Public Health under criteria set out in the measure. The other half would fund research grants, with a council of representatives from UC campuses and other universities and research institutions involved in the process. The measure requires 10 percent of revenue from funded discoveries to go first toward repaying the state, and requires that treatments developed with the funds and sold in California generally be offered at a 20 percent discount. The state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst estimates the bonds would cost $500 million to $600 million a year for about 20 years, with some or all of that offset if the research generates revenue.

Why No?

Proponents, including the Michael J. Fox Foundation and Alzheimer's Los Angeles, argue federal research funding has become uncertain, so California needs a stable source of its own. Nobody opposing Proposition 38 disputes that medical research is valuable. The question is whether this measure is a sound way to fund it. It is not.

The most serious problem is who benefits. A CalMatters analysis found that the measure's eligibility criteria for selecting who is to receive half the $8.4 billion in funding is likely to fit only one institute: the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy. That institute's co-founder and prominent donor is the measure's chief backer. Roughly $4.2 billion of public money would flow to an organization its own sponsor helped create, on terms written by that sponsor.

The claim that Proposition 38 “pays for itself” also doesn't hold up. The 10 percent return to the state is a share of revenue from discoveries that may never materialize. Drug development is slow, expensive, and uncertain, and a bond repaid over 20 years doesn't wait for the science. The Legislative Analyst's wording is conditional: some or all of the cost of the bonds would be offset if the research generates revenue. If it doesn't, taxpayers cover the full cost.

California has been through this before. Voters authorized bonds for stem cell research in 2004 and again in 2020, together allowing about $8.5 billion in borrowing, with promises that the funding would be paid back through fees and royalties generated by the newly created, and politically connected, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, fees and royalties have returned less than one percent of the total cost of the bonds. If immunology deserves a dedicated public investment, it should be made through a process open to every qualified institution in the state, not one whose criteria appear to select a winner.

Vote Yes.

tldr: Proposition 39 amends the California Constitution to require government-issued ID for in-person voting, partial ID verification for mail-in ballots, and database checks for citizenship attestations – while guaranteeing free voter IDs for eligible citizens. 

Why Yes?

Proposition 39 amends the California Constitution to establish standard identification requirements for state elections. Under the measure, voters must present government-issued ID when voting in person and provide the last four digits of a government ID number when voting by mail. It also directs election officials to use best efforts to cross-check voter citizenship attestations against existing government data and publish annual county verification reports.

Requiring basic identification is a common-sense safeguard for a cornerstone function of democracy. And it’s popular: A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that 83 percent of Americans – including 71 percent of Democrats – support requiring government-issued photo identification to vote. Photo ID is already universally required to drive, open a bank account, board a plane, purchase age-restricted goods, or receive public benefits. Voting should be held to no lower standard.

Vote No.

tldr (adapted from the California state voter guide): This is the infamous wealth tax that you’ve been hearing so much about lately. If passed, Proposition 40 would impose a five percent tax on California residents with assets over $1 billion. 

Why No?

Without the slightest exaggeration, this is an idea concocted by idiots. Taxes can be thought of as coming in two varieties: sumptuary and revenue. Sumptuary taxes are intended to reduce certain behaviors – they’re also known as “sin” taxes. Revenue taxes are intended to, as their name implies, raise revenues. 

In an ideal world revenue taxes don’t alter behavior, at all. In the real world people respond by moving, changing jobs, working less, buying different products, etc. There’s an entire field of economics called optimal tax theory devoted to designing tax schemes that minimize behavioral distortions – or, to the extent distortions inevitably occur, ensuring that they’re beneficial ones. 

Wealth taxes are like the answer to a final exam question in Econ 101 asking students to design the worst revenue policy imaginable according to optimal tax theorists. They discourage wealth accumulation and income generating activities. They encourage those who have wealth to spend it down as quickly as possible by purchasing consumption goods and rapidly depreciating assets (think Michelin Star meals and luxury sports cars) rather than investing that wealth in capital (think stocks, bonds, and other things that finance business activity, R&D, and job creation). Most worryingly, they encourage capital flight: Why should billionaires live, start businesses, and pay taxes in California if they can avoid confiscatory taxes elsewhere?

In 1990, 12 European countries had wealth taxes. By 2017, that number had dropped to four. The reason is that these taxes caused each country’s wealthiest, most productive business owners to establish residence elsewhere. And that’s a scenario involving significant barriers to exit: acquiring citizenship in a new state, learning a new language, etc. It’s far easier for a California billionaire to simply relocate to Texas or Florida, as many already have at the prospect of this proposition passing. A mass exodus of high earners would be particularly devastating for California, where the top one percent of taxpayers by income account for almost 30 percent of state budget revenues.

And that number, of course, only takes into account the direct hit to the budget from lost income taxes. High earners will take their businesses – both current and future – with them, along with corporate and sales taxes paid by those businesses, and the other downstream economic benefits they provide. In fact, Proposition 40 is so poorly written that it seems intentionally designed to kill California’s biggest industry: tech. 

Consider a very common scenario in Silicon Valley: A founder of a unicorn startup valued at $10 billion and who owns 10 percent of the shares in that startup would owe the state $50 million in taxes, even if all his wealth is on paper and his annual salary is $200 thousand. And if it turns out next year that the startup’s technology isn’t as valuable as first believed, and its valuation is cut to $100 million – does he get the $50 million back? Lol, no. In other words, the more successful your startup becomes, the more California punishes you. If that doesn’t make Miami look attractive, we don’t know what does.

Another example of how poorly thought through this proposition is comes from its treatment of voting rights. Many founders who, often correctly, think they have a better understanding of how to run their businesses than their VC or institutional investors have “super voting” shares. Thus, a founder may own just one percent of the shares of a $100 billion business, meaning he has $1 billion net worth. But his shares give him 51 percent of the voting rights in the business. According to Proposition 40’s language, he’s taxed as though he has a $51 billion net worth. The result? He owes the state $2.55 billion in taxes – more than everything he owns!

This is why tech industry leaders are sounding the alarm about Proposition 40. It would effectively make Silicon Valley impossible, devastating California’s economy in the short term while the tech ecosystem reconstitutes elsewhere, and severely retarding America’s competitiveness in the long term because the reconstitution of an entire ecosystem will take years – if it’s even possible.

Vote Yes.

tldr: Proposition 41 amends the California Constitution to mandate pre-election state audits for voter-proposed special taxes and require quadrennial audits for all new special tax programs. 

Why Yes?

Proposition 41 amends the California Constitution to enforce strict oversight over “special taxes”  – revenue streams earmarked for designated policy purposes. Earmarked taxes often carry appealing titles that convince voters a program is well-managed, even when funds are wasted or hoarded in massive unspent balances.

Taxpayers deserve objective evidence that special tax revenues actually deliver results rather than serving as marketing gimmicks for permanent revenue streams. Proposition 41 directs the California State Auditor to analyze voter-proposed special taxes prior to an election, publishing objective findings directly in the official voter guide. Audits must evaluate program management, identify potential waste and fraud, and outline strategies to achieve at least ten percent annual budgetary savings.

To ensure long-term accountability, Proposition 41 also requires that programs receiving revenue from new or increased special taxes – whether approved by voters or the Legislature – undergo comprehensive state audits every four years.

California’s history demonstrates that earmarked funds frequently suffer from administrative decay without continuous auditing. For instance, a state audit of 2004’s Mental Health Services Act revealed $231 million in unspent funds sitting in excessive reserves, while audits of tobacco special taxes uncovered unauthorized spending, improper agency allocations, and a lack of public disclosure. A dedicated funding source should never be a free pass from fiscal discipline.

Vote Yes.

tldr: Proposition 42 amends the California Constitution to ban state taxes on personal property – including savings, stock investments, business equity, and retirement accounts – and prohibit retroactive tax levies.

Why Yes?

Proposition 42 amends the California Constitution to block state and local governments from imposing new taxes on personal property, explicitly safeguarding personal savings, investments, private business equity, and worker retirement holdings across all income levels. It also establishes a firm constitutional ban on retroactive tax liabilities.

Californians should be encouraged to build financial independence, not penalized for doing so:

California cannot afford to add wealth taxes to a tax system already driving away its core revenue base. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reports a net loss of approximately 165,000 higher-income adults over the past decade, while the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) estimates that outmigration reduced state income tax revenue growth by nearly $1 billion in 2023-24 alone. Piling on new taxes or retroactive liabilities will give productive taxpayers another reason to leave.

California’s long-term economic stability depends on retaining capital and encouraging personal savings. Proposition 42 creates a vital constitutional firewall to protect that stability.

Vote Yes.

tldr (adapted from the California state voter guide): Proposition 43 limits voters’ ability to pass voter-proposed local special taxes by increasing the percentage of votes needed to approve such ballot measures from a majority (over 50 percent) to two-thirds, beginning January 1, 2027. 

Why Yes?

California has a unique set of rules that govern how many votes different types of taxes need in order to be enacted. Originally, propositions for local “general” taxes – the revenues from which can be spent on any budget item – on the ballot only needed a simple majority to pass, while those for local “special” taxes – earmarked for specific budget items – needed a two-thirds majority. 

Voters approved this bifurcation in 1978 through Proposition 13, under the theory that special interests should have to clear a higher threshold in order to get a tax enacted if they backed it and it would likely only benefit them. Unfortunately, in an egregious case of judicial activism, the California Supreme Court in 2017 determined that the legislative text that had been operative and uncontroversial for nearly 40 years meant something entirely different than everyone else in the state thought it meant. Substituting their own judgment for the voters’, the justices of the Court decided that Proposition 13 actually allowed a local special tax to be enacted by a simple majority if it were put on the ballot via citizen initiative (re: signature gathering).

This proposition would simply re-assert the commonly accepted understanding of Proposition 13’s language and make it so that propositions for local special taxes need a two-thirds majority to pass, regardless of how they are put up on the ballot. The fact that California voters have to pass Proposition 43 just to get their voices heard and the law obeyed should embarrass the California Supreme Court, but we doubt it will.

Vote No.

tldr: Proposition 44 imposes a 90 percent program-spending requirement on community health clinics.

Why No?

Proposition 44 purports to force nonprofit community health clinics to focus spending on direct patient care by mandating that at least 90 percent of revenue go toward program services rather than administration and salaries. In practice, however, the measure imposes an arbitrary accounting cap that threatens the financial stability of safety-net clinics serving low-income and uninsured Californians.

Voters should reject this ill-conceived mandate for three key reasons:

• According to the Legislative Analyst, California clinics already spend an average of 80 percent of revenue on direct healthcare services. Forcing a rigid 90 percent threshold – with the Attorney General arbitrarily determining which operational expenses count – will starve clinics of necessary administrative, compliance, and management support, potentially forcing community health centers to cut services or close altogether.

• Proposition 44 is sponsored by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), the union behind three failed dialysis ballot measures in 2018, 2020, and 2022. A federal lawsuit filed by the California Primary Care Association and health centers alleges that SEIU-UHW offered to withdraw Proposition 44 in exchange for union-organizing concessions – exposing the initiative as a political leverage tactic rather than a genuine patient-care reform.

• Administrative and operating costs are not inherently waste; essential functions like security, IT infrastructure, compliance, and facility upkeep are necessary to keep clinics open. Forcing clinics to meet a rigid percentage benchmark does nothing to reduce appointment wait times or improve patient outcomes.

Broad medical consensus stands firmly against this measure, with both the California Medical Association and the California Primary Care Association opposing Proposition 44. Depriving safety-net clinics of operational resources is a dangerous substitute for real healthcare improvement.

Vote Yes.

tldr (adapted from the California state voter guide): This proposition amends the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to expedite environmental review for certain projects (including most housing, transportation, water, and health projects) by setting deadlines to complete environmental review and resolve lawsuits challenging project approvals. 

Why Yes?

As we noted in our discussion of Proposition C, building homes to meet demand is the single best way to make housing more affordable. In order to build more homes, California needs to dramatically lower development costs. 

At the moment, essential projects can spend years trapped in environmental review, permitting, and litigation before construction even begins. Special interest groups weaponize the environmental review process by intentionally lodging meritless challenges that drag on for years, betting that they can kill new housing developments by simply making the timelines to completion economically infeasible. After all, a developer usually takes on sizable debts at the start of a project, and must pay interest on those debts every day until the project is complete and can be sold for a profit.

Proposition 45 addresses this problem directly. It establishes enforceable deadlines for agencies to complete environmental reviews and permits, accelerates court challenges, and gives project sponsors greater certainty about the rules governing projects. 

Proposition 45 does not abolish CEQA or eliminate environmental review. Projects remain subject to environmental laws and government approval. All that changes is the process itself being an indefinite obstacle to building.