California Democrats Plan to Starve Proposition 36 to Death

On November 5, 2024, California voters overwhelmingly adopted Proposition 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, a modest reform to restore consequences for thieves and drug dealers and require treatment for addicts. It’s adoption was a complete rebuke of Proposition 47, the so-called Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act adopted in 2014, with major funding from the ACLU and socialist billionaire George Soros. That measure decriminalized theft and drug crimes. It’s important to note that Proposition 47 was supported by then Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrat super majority in the state legislature. Ten years later, these same politicians opposed Proposition 36, although millions of democrats voted for it.

The problem that arises when voters adopt a ballot measure that the Governor and the controlling majority of the Legislature oppose is that the money to implement the measure must be appropriated by the Legislature and approved by the Governor. On January 10, 2025, Governor Newsom sent his 2025-2026 budget proposal to the Legislature. It included zero funds for additional county jail space or drug treatment programs needed to enforce Proposition 36. When a reporter asked the Governor about this he said, “We are absolutely committed to implementing the terms that were established by the voters.” At the same time he was telling this lie, Newsom was asking for a $3.4 billion loan to cover the state’s shortfall in funds for free medical care for illegal aliens. With no state funding, it is likely that Proposition 36 will simply starve to death.

This has happened in California before. In 1993 the democrat-controlled Legislature refused to adopt AB 971, the Three Strikes and You’re Out sentencing law to crack-down on habitual felons. Months later 12-year-old Polly Klaas was kidnapped from her home in the sleepy town of Petaluma. After two months of almost nightly national news coverage of her disappearance, police arrested habitual felon Richard Allen Davis, who led them to the little girl’s raped and murdered body. That tragedy sharpened the public’s focus on crime and propelled Mike Reynolds, the father of a another girl murdered by an habitual felon, to qualify the Three Strikes initiative for the 1994 general election. In an attempt to head this off, the legislature scrambled to pass AB 971. But Reynolds went forward with the initiative, knowing that the Legislature could not repeal or amend a voter adopted ballot measure. It passed with 72% of the vote. One of the primary objectives of Three Strikes was to increase the number of repeat felons sent to prison and keep them there longer. This required the democrat-controlled legislature to approve funding for more prison space. The majority refused, and even with Republican Governor Pete Wilson in office, no bill authorizing funding for additional prison beds reached his desk. The same held true under Governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. As a result, the prisons became overcrowded. Then the ACLU began to file federal lawsuits on behalf of inmates seeking court orders to reduce the “unconstitutional” prison overcrowding. The suits were filed before activist judges in San Francisco and Sacramento who both unsurprisingly ruled for the inmates. In 2010 an activist three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit rewarded this effort, ordering the release of between 30,000 and 35,000 inmates. A year later the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that order on a 5-4 vote.

The same thing happened after California voters adopted Proposition 66 in 2016. That measure, called “The Death Penalty Reform and Savings Act,” removed judicially and bureaucratically created obstacles to the appeal of death penalty cases. The measure moved the direct appeals of these cases from the overburdened Supreme Court to the multiple state courts of appeal to speed review. It eliminated the five- year deadline for appointing an attorney to represent the murderer, put the appointment responsibility with the trial judge and made hundreds of experienced attorneys, rather than a select handful, eligible. It placed a 5-year deadline on deciding the direct appeal and directed that attacks on a trial attorney’s competence be resolved by the trial judge who watched him perform. The initiative also required the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to find and authorize alternative execution methods and reduced judges from staying executions due to their dislike of one specific method. These changes, if enforced, would have reduced the state’s 20-year-plus post conviction review process to roughly five years in most cases. But as with Proposition 36 and Three Strikes, the legislature and then-Governor Jerry Brown was opposed to the death penalty and any measure to speed its enforcement. Of course no funding to implement Proposition 66 has ever been adopted so the reforms that the voters have demanded are sitting on a shelf. The same year that the initiative passed, Gavin Newsom, while campaigning for governor, told the Modesto Bee that he would “be accountable to the will of the voters” if elected. “I would not get my personal opinions in the way of the public’s right to make a determination of where they want to take us.” Prior to his election in 2018 Newsom reiterated his respect for the public will, saying he didn’t “want to get ahead of the will of the voters.” How about that? Another lie.

On March 13, 2019, three months after taking office, Newsom issued an executive order granting a reprieve to every murderer on California’s death row, citing his personal opposition to the death penalty.

It is clear that politicians serving in California’s uni-party government have no intention of allowing enforcement of any law they did not like, and passing another ballot measure will not solve this problem. It is time to replace these politicians with people willing to give more than lip service to public safety while campaigning.