USGBC California Ballot Measure Recommendations

USGBC California takes positions on ballot measures based on current program positions and/or alignment with overall USGBC mission and vision. Positions are developed through member study, discussion and consensus with Leadership Reps of all California Chapters. As a guide to statewide membership, USGBC California makes the following recommendations:

• Become an informed citizen
• Cast an informed vote November 6th
• YES on Prop 30 In supporting the Governor’s tax proposal, we feel that the nightmare prospect of funding devastation to California community colleges and K-12 schools is not something that should be borne, and would be unnecessarily disruptive to an emerging and sustainable California economy. Let’s begin getting our house in order and moving forward.
• NO on Prop 32 Prop 32 is an initiative that purports to be a good government measure but actually is a transparent effort to eliminate the primary union funding mechanism and therefore silence labor’s voices. And if you haven’t spent time lately on where the labor movement (who has greatly impacted such taken-for-granted middle class pillars of our civil society as forty-hour weeks, heath care and social security) is headed in the future take a look through the BlueGreen Alliance/Apollo site.
• YES on Prop 39 USGBC California has been a founding supporter of Prop 39, which closes a tax loophole that every other state (except Missouri) has already dealt with, putting both out-of-state and in-state companies on the same footing: basing their taxes on their sales within California. Proceeds from Prop 39, projected to be over $1B annually, will benefit building energy efficiency projects, education and the general fund in that order. It is telling that how no one admits to knowing how this loophole initially came about; closing it provides direct benefit and needed investment capital to California.

For more information on all propositions, including great non-partisan facts(!) on who is supporting and opposing and funding them, check out Next 10’s California Choices site.” For the Legislative Analyst’s reports on all the Propositions, visit here.