Propositions to Test Generosity of State’s Voters

The deadline to qualify state and local propositions for the November ballot passed Friday, and voters will be asked to raise money for causes including education, emergency rooms and low-income housing.

Voters in Los Angeles County will vote on a parcel tax that would raise $150 million annually for the area’s faltering emergency and trauma-care network. They will also be asked to authorize a $250-million bond issue to pay for upgrading several county science and cultural institutions.

Statewide, voters will be asked to approve bond issues to raise money for low-income housing, water services and public education.

Measures for individual school districts total more than $10 billion across the state, according to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Jarvis organization, said he expects the amount of the bond and tax proposals to create a backlash.

“Many voters are going to be facing sticker shock,” Vosburgh said. “There is a lot of anger, and it is much more than the usual election.”

But a political consultant, Harvey Englander, said he expects voters to look at the propositions individually. He said many of the propositions face hurdles, not because they appear alongside other proposed spending increases, but because of the weak economy and the weak political coalitions behind some of them.

Pointing to Los Angeles County’s health tax proposal, which was put on the ballot by a 3-2 vote of county supervisors, Englander said, “You’ll have a strong argument in support, made by a powerful supervisor such as Zev Yaroslavsky. But making the opposing argument will be another powerful supervisor.”

In Orange County, voters will be asked to urge the U.S. Navy to completely clean up the former El Toro Marine Corps base before it is sold. The base, which closed in July 1999, is on the federal Superfund list as one of the nation’s most polluted sites.

The Nov. 5 ballot measure asks the Navy to reconcile its cleanup plan for El Toro with studies by Irvine and the county, which contend that the Navy’s plan is inadequate. Voters in March approved turning the former base into a large urban park.

A public demand for full cleanup could resonate beyond Orange County. Congress is considering more military base closings in 2005, meaning that more communities could be looking to the Navy’s record at El Toro. Pollution discovered at other closed bases has stalled redevelopment and added millions of dollars in costs.

In San Francisco, the November ballot will include a contentious battle over the treatment of the city’s homeless waged by two supervisors who are expected to run for mayor in 2003.

Supervisor Tom Ammiano proposes building 1,000 low-cost housing units in the next two years, while Gavin Newsom wants to reduce funding for 8,000 or more people who live on the streets in one of the nation’s most expensive cities.

In the city of Ventura, voters will decide whether to allow 1,390 luxury homes to be built on the city’s hillsides. The developer has agreed to set aside 3,000 acres as permanent open space.

Opponents of Measure A argue that the initiative includes a detailed development agreement written by the hillside landowners without input from the city. They say this would lock in approval of certain aspects of the development before crucial environmental and traffic studies were complete.

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Times staff writers Jean O. Pasco, John Glionna and Jenifer Ragland contributed to this report.