Possible Ballot Initiatives for November 2022
Please view our Timeline page to see where we are in this process. This page is updated through April 2020 and, for your review and comment, shows examples of initiatives that will transform California. The solutions offered below are the beginning of this process and we welcome your suggestions. Our goal is to have these initiative choices settled by early 2021. Then after legal review, they will be submitted to the California Secretary of State for Title and Summary.
Education – Empower Parental Choice
Goal: End the teachers union monopoly over public education by making K-12 schools compete for students.
Solutions: Charter school reform, education savings accounts, expansion of home schooling and computerized learning, school vouchers, enhanced parent trigger laws. This initiative aims to enable a robust and diverse array of options for parents to educate their children, including traditional public schools and academies, charter schools, private schools, parochial schools, and home schooling.
Education – Reform Work Rules
Goal: Change the union negotiated work rules that have made it impossible to manage public schools, and have harmed our students ability to learn.
Solutions: Revise the work rules governing management of K-12 public school teachers to (a) lengthen the period required for tenure to five years, (b) replace seniority with merit as the criteria governing layoffs, and (c) make it easier to fire under-performing teachers.
Housing – Affordable Suburbs Act
Goal: Reform environmental laws that have been abused to make housing and infrastructure too expensive.
Solutions: Revise regulations that have made housing unaffordable in California as follows: a) Repeal those provisions in SB 375 (2008) that linked transit funds to urban containment zoning; (b) permit construction ‘by right’ and exempt all residential housing from the California Environmental Quality Act (1970), (c) repeal California’s Office of Planning & Research ruling linking building permit fees to vehicle miles traveled calculations, (d) grant “magisterial ministerial authority” to housing zoning to apply preferentially to all types of housing including single family home construction on raw land, (e) repeal state laws that go beyond federal law to protect threatened species, (f) repeal California Water Board’s ‘Waters of the State’ ruling designed to supersede the federal Clean Water Act.
Environment – Regulatory Reform Act
Goal: Reform environmental regulations that have been abused to make housing and infrastructure too expensive.
Solutions: California’s Environmental Quality Act of 1970, “CEQA,” will be modified as follows: (a) duplicative lawsuits shall be prohibited, (b) all entities that file CEQA lawsuits will be required to fully disclose their identities and their environmental or non-environmental interest, (c) court rules that still enable delaying tactics will be illegal, (d) rulings that stop entire projects on a single issue will be prohibited, (e) the loser in CEQA litigation will be liable for legal fees.
Energy
Goal: Streamline process to allow private companies to produce abundant clean, affordable energy.
Solutions: California’s public utility commission shall exercise its authority as follows: (a) keep Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open, (b) authorize natural gas drilling in California including slant drilling from land based rigs into natural gas reserves located offshore in the California Channel, (c) streamline approval of lithium mining in California.
Water
Goal: To fund upgraded and new modern infrastructure that will make water abundant in California.
Solutions: General obligation bonds in the amount of $50 billion shall be used to: (a) provide a minimum 50% of funding (with the remainder funded via revenue bonds) necessary to construct desalination plants on Southern California coast to produce 2.0 million acre feet of water per year for Southern California households, (b) fund 100% of costs necessary to complete the Sites and Temperance Flat reservoirs, upgrade the Friant-Kern canal.
Transportation
Goal: Rebuild roads and freeways for the 21st century.
Solutions: HSR and other mass transit project funding shall be redirected towards building new connector roads and expressways both for existing urban areas and also for new housing subdivisions built on raw land. In addition, General obligation bonds in the amount of $50 billion shall be used to: (a) add at least one lane in each direction and modernize I-5, Hwy 99, Hwy 101, and other major thoroughfares, (b) offer matching funds to private companies constructing underground transportation systems in major cities.
Pensions
Goal: Empower local elected officials to restore solvency to public pensions; redirect pension fund investments to benefit California’s economy.
Solutions: (a) Repeal “California Rule” to allow public agencies to modify pension benefit accrual formulas for future work. (b) Mandate all pension funds serving state and local government employees in California allocate a minimum of 10 percent of their total invested assets in revenue bonds to fund investment in California infrastructure.
Law & Order
Goal: Restore safety and sanitation to California’s cities.
Solutions: Repeal Prop. 47, Prop. 57, AB 109 and AB 953. Establish minimum security work camps for nonviolent substance abusers and petty thieves.