Picking and Choosing the Props

California voters showed a strong independent streak on statewide ballot propositions in Tuesday’s election, most significantly giving public schools a double boost but also gambling on a sweeping measure to eliminate jail sentences for most nonviolent drug offenders.

A school voucher measure went down to resounding defeat, but Proposition 39, to reduce the margin necessary to pass local school bonds from an onerous two out of three votes to 55%, passed by a small margin. The lower threshold will make it easier for local school districts to raise funds to repair, modernize, expand and build schools.

The drastic and overly broad voucher initiative, Proposition 38, could have drained funds from good and bad schools by providing a state-financed tuition scholarship to every school-age child whose parents wanted the aid, regardless of need. The hugely lopsided vote against it, coupled with the loss of a state voucher initiative in Michigan, is enough to discourage most of those who ended up on the losing half of the contest, which cost both sides nearly $50 million. However, the prime sponsor of Proposition 38, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Timothy C. Draper, promises he’ll be back. He should at least wait to see how well a slew of ambitious state and local education reforms is doing.

The whopping 60% victory of Proposition 36, the drug treatment measure, signaled voter dissatisfaction with drug crime sentences, but tying the hands of judges, who in too many cases can’t even threaten to impose jail time, goes too far. It is now up to Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature to figure out how to implement this measure without wasting lives, time or taxpayer millions.

A similarly large number of voters bought the confusing and enticing language of Proposition 34, which promised much more campaign reform than the measure will deliver. Most voters are eager to take big money out of politics and welcomed this measure as they had previous reforms, later struck down by the courts. Proposition 34, if it stands, would allow individual donors to give as much as $20,000 to candidates running for governor and would impose no limits on so-called soft money contributions to political parties, the same loophole that corrupts the federal campaign system. The measure’s chief architects, the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly, should be ashamed of this duplicity, which also threatens to gut a much tougher campaign reform law, Proposition 208, that is still tied up in the courts.

Of the eight state ballot propositions before voters Tuesday, most prevailed, including a bond issue to help veterans and a measure to give more public work to private architects and engineers. The losers included legislators, who wanted new retirement benefits, and corporations seeking a way out of paying pollution cleanup and prevention fees.

Some of the ballot issues--for instance the school bond threshold and the public works outsourcing--required changes to the state Constitution or otherwise needed voter approval. But in most cases, a ballot initiative signals a special-interest ax being ground, a legislative failure of nerve, or both.