IT’S OK TO TELL CALIFORNIA VOTERS THE TRUTH

Since his election in 2016, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, has been leading the charge to lower extreme housing costs and to change the sad fact that they have left the Golden State with the nation’s highest rate of poverty. Wiener crafted legislation that built off two key insights from thenGov. Jerry Brown — that the well-meaning California Environmental Quality Act had become the most potent tool of all to block new housing, and that an approach which focused on building extremely costly subsidized “affordable housing” would never generate enough units to have more than a marginal effect on supply. In 2017, Wiener won passage of a law that required cities that do not meet their state-determined housing production goals to streamline approval of new projects. And in 2021, Wiener played a key role in getting “upzoning” changes approved to allow more housing units on existing lots and making it easier to increase housing density in areas with access to public transit.

The results have not helped as quickly as some hoped. But state housing starts hit a 14-year high in 2022 and the number of “accessory dwelling units” built on lots with existing homes keeps going up, raising hopes of what The Atlantic has dubbed a “housing revolution.” This constructive history is what makes it so disappointing that Wiener is crusading to make it easier to dupe California voters by hiding information from them at a time when misleading summaries of local and state ballot measures are already all too common across California. San Diegans witnessed an egregious example in November, when a measure was approved that wouldn’t have been were it described accurately. A decisive first step toward charging single-family homeowners for trash collection was sold with the myth that it was actually about letting the city “explore ways to improve your [trash] service.” The problem is even more acute at the state level. In 2020, for one of many examples, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra approved vague ballot language that left out any hint that one measure would have resulted in an immense state property tax increase.

Fortunately, in 2017, Assemblymember Jay Obernolte, R-Big Bear Lake won passage of a law — with backing from Brown — that required local ballot measures involving bonds or taxes to specifically inform voters how much the measures would cost them and for how long. This frustrated some local officials, who had rarely provided such information, claiming it was readily available and shouldn’t use up room in ballot summaries that had 75-word limits. In 2019, Wiener concluded being upfront with voters would make it too difficult for local officials to pass tax or bond measures, and he won the Legislature’s passage of a bill that would let key financial information be included only in official voter guides. To his credit, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it, saying leaving such information to far less-read voter guides would decrease much-needed transparency.

But Wiener still wants to give voters less information on their ballots. This year, he again introduced a bill to encourage voter manipulation, arguing that more information creates “massive” obstacles to governments raising taxes or adding bond debt.

The sliver of good news here is that last month, Wiener made what appears to be a significant concession — no longer challenging the requirement that the financial information be included in ballot statements, but not counting that information against the 75-word maximum. State Capitol observers know that what appears to be a concession can turn out to be a ploy — especially thanks to the notorious gut-and-amend process in which bills can be hollowed out, radically rewritten and then passed with little scrutiny in the frantic closing days of the budget year or the legislative session.

It was thanks to this process that Californians recently got the stunning news that last June, the Legislature and Newsom had quietly approved a radical policy that will impose an income-based fixed charge on the monthly bills of residential customers of the investor-owned utilities which provide about three-quarters of state electricity demand.

And it was thanks to this process that Wiener’s previous bill impeding election honesty passed the Legislature in September 2019. The measure was originally an innocuous proposal to make more state residents eligible for social services programs.

Many Californians are cynical about the Legislature. But are they cynical enough? Maybe not — given that Wiener knew he would face no consequences for asserting that it was more important for local officials to be able to add to their constituents’ burdens than for those constituents to know what the burdens would be. His excellent efforts on housing continue to deserve praise. But it doesn’t make his assault on democracy acceptable in any way.