This simply appears fallacious: Californians overwhelmingly accepted an anti-crime poll measure in November. However our governor strongly opposed the proposition. So he’s not funding it.
A core precept of democracy is the rule of legislation. A governor might dislike a legislation, however usually is duty- sure to assist implement and implement it. Heaven save us if governors begin traipsing the twisted path of President Donald Trump.
Voters twice — in 2012 and 2016 — rejected poll measures to remove the dying penalty.
Nothing on California’s poll final yr acquired extra votes than Proposition 36, which will increase punishment for repeated theft and arduous drug offenses and requires remedy for repetitive felony addicts.
Received by landslide
It handed with 68.4% of the vote, carrying all 58 counties — 55 of them by landslide margins, together with all counties within the liberal San Francisco Bay Space.
“To call it a mandate is an understatement,” says Greg Totten, chief government officer of the California District Attorneys Affiliation, which sponsored the initiative. Huge retailers bankrolled it.
“It isn’t a red or blue issue,” provides Totten, referring to offering sufficient cash to fund the promised drug and psychological well being remedy. “It’s what’s compassionate and what’s right and what the public expects us to do.”
Proposition 47 lowered sure property and arduous drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and arrests plummeted, the nonpartisan Public Coverage Institute of California discovered.
Proposition 36 was impressed by escalating retail theft, together with smash-and-grab burglaries, that had been just about unpunished. Elevated peddling of lethal fentanyl additionally stirred the general public.
The poll measure imposed more durable penalties for dealing and possessing fentanyl, treating it like different arduous medicine, similar to heroin and cocaine. However the proposition provided a carrot to addicted serial criminals: Many might be provided remedy moderately than jail time.
“We don’t need to go back to the broken policies of the last century,” the governor declared. “Mass incarceration has been proven ineffective and is not the answer.”
Proposition 36 was flawed in a single regard: It lacked a funding mechanism. That was a part of the backers’ political technique. To specify a income supply — a tax enhance, the raid of an present program — would have created a fats goal for opponents.
Let the governor and the Legislature resolve learn how to fund it, sponsors determined.
“We didn’t want to tie the hands of the Legislature,” Totten says. “The Legislature doesn’t like that.”
With out funding from Sacramento, Proposition 36 gained’t work, says Graham Knaus, chief government officer of the California State Affiliation of Counties.
“We believe strongly that if it’s not properly funded, it’s going to fail,” Knaus says. “Proposition 36 requires increased capacity for mental health and substance abuse treatment. And until that’s in place, there’s not really a way to make the sentencing work.”
There’s a concern amongst Proposition 36 supporters that if remedy isn’t provided to qualifying addicts, courts gained’t permit jail sentencing.
“That will probably get litigated,” Totten says.
“Counties can’t implement 36 for free,” Knaus says. “Voters declared this to be a top-level precedence.
It’s on the state to find out learn how to fund it. Counties have a really restricted potential to lift income.”
The district lawyer and county organizations peg the annual value of implementing the measure at $250 million. State Senate Republicans are capturing for the moon: $400 million. The nonpartisan legislative analyst initially figured that the associated fee ranged “from several tens of millions of dollars to the low hundreds of millions of dollars each year.”
The governor, in truth, acquired a bit surly when requested about it by a reporter.
“There were a lot of supervisors in the counties that promoted it,” the governor asserted. “So this is their opportunity to step up. Fund it.”
Voters have spoken
“It’s disappointing and immensely frustrating,” says Bruce Gibson, a longtime San Luis Obispo County supervisor. “Voters have spoken and we need to work together with the state in partnership.”
In equity, the governor and the Legislature are confronted with the daunting process of patching a projected $12-billion gap within the funds, plus getting ready for the unpredictable fiscal whims of a president who retains threatening to withhold federal funds from California as a result of he doesn’t like our insurance policies.
“I am quite concerned about adequately providing the necessary funding to implement Proposition 36,” says state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, a powerful Democratic supporter of the measure.
He’s fearful that the Legislature will approve solely a token quantity of funding — and the governor will veto even that.
Below California’s progressive system of direct democracy, voters are allowed to bypass Sacramento and enact a state legislation themselves. Assuming the statue is constitutional, the state then has an obligation to implement it. To disregard the voters is a slap within the face of democracy.
George Skelton is a Los Angeles Occasions columnist. ©2025 Los Angeles Occasions. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.
