Prop 15 - YES

California spent much of its history as a Republican state and in the latter half of the 20th century, it was most definitely one of those Republican states. 1978 saw the culmination of a fervent anti-tax revolt that passed Proposition 13. It locked in property tax rate growth to no more than 2% annually. According to the non-partisan state Legislative Analyst’s Office, Prop 13 has robbed California schools and cities $740 million annually since its passing - which amounts to $26 billion lost as a consequence of Boomer greed. To this day, one can look at any real estate property value website and find, on any block in the state, homes where the tax rate is in the low thousands with adjacent homes costing tens of thousands in property tax.

This year’s Proposition 15 is an attempt to remedy this disparity and save our schools and cities. In what’s referred to as a split-roll reform, Prop 15 seeks to equalize the unequal tax system we have by having commercial and industrial property assessed at market-rates while separating residential assessment. An old political advert adage from past split-roll attempts was “Disneyland gets away with paying less in taxes than grandma does on her house”. It was an exaggeration, sure, but actually not far from the truth. Commercial and industrial property disproportionately benefit from a property tax system that is unusual in the rest of the nation and it has served for decades to rob our cities and our schools of necessary funding.

Prop 15 has exemptions for business owners whose with less than $3 million in holdings and exempt $500,000 in a small business owner’s tangible property value. Don’t believe advertisements saying this will hurt farmers and small business owners; there is nothing written in the measure or that could happen as a consequence that could do that. Prop. 15 is a sorely-needed reform to our tax code that will benefit schools, children, and families. Vote yes.

Prop 20 - NO

2016 was a dark year with a bright spot here in California when voters approved Proposition 57 by expanding parole options for individuals serving time for non-violent felons (as an FYI, auto theft is an example of nonviolent felony as is voting twice in an election) and gave judges (instead of overzealous prosecutors) the power to determine if children would be tried as adults.

2016’s Prop 57 built on the 2011 law AB 109 and 2014’s Prop 47 which reclassified certain felonies as misdemeanors with the exception of criminal records of violent crimes. Among many things, this meant crimes like shoplifting or writing bad checks wouldn’t mar a person’s record forever and disqualify them from normally participating in public life after their sentence. Voters understood these reforms to be smart and fair while also preserving the toughness of the law. Voters passed both by 2/3 majorities.

Assemblymember Jim Cooper, notably a Democrat and former cop who represents Elk Grove and parts of Sacramento, disagrees with voters and the need to build a justice system that is compassionate to incarcerated individuals and fair to taxpayers. Jim Cooper does not trust the will of California voters over the past decade to reform the system and put Prop 20 on the ballot. This would undo our strides on the equity front of the law and is flat-out disrespectful to voters. Vote no.

Prop 22 - NO

Another history lesson: the Borello decision, as ruled by the California Supreme Court, is a landmark 1989 case that established the benchmark for labor classification in the state. Under the Borrello Test, independent contractors could only be considered contractors if and only if they did not pass the muster of the hiring entity’s “right of control”. The Borrello Test is eleven steps that you can easily Google, but essentially: if your boss told you where to go, when to go there, what to do there, and how you’d be doing your job once there, you were an employee, not an independent contractor.

Borrello was the standard in California for nearly 30 years, until 2018 when the California Supreme Court ruled in the Dynamex case. Dynamex upended California’s labor code in regards to contractor vs. employee status by making “right of control” only one of three factors in this distinction, thus establishing the ABC Test. The ABC Test presumes workers are employees for the purposes of receiving benefits and to qualify a worker as an independent contractor, hiring entities must pass the test.

Now this is important, because Dynamex/the ABC Test are the law of the land and you need to understand it to understand the full context of Prop 22. The Test is:

• (A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact;

• (B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and

• (C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.

What a worker who drives for Uber or Lyft, delivers for Doordash or Postmates, or runs orders for Instacart fills out for income tax (1099 vs. W2) doesn’t determine classification status either so, according to the Dynamex ruling, they are employees:

• These companies control the work of the employees by dictating work processes and hours, setting rates and fares, and doling out tips and payment.

• These companies are hiring workers for work that is in line with their usual course of business. Uber is not a software company that just happens to have drivers ferrying private persons around - as much as they’d have you think - they are taxicab companies hiring people to be taxicab drivers to taxicab passengers. Think of it like this: you are a baker and your sister is a painter. A bakery hires you to bake cupcakes, your specialty, because they are expecting a big order for a, presumably socially-distanced outdoor wedding, then that same bakery hires your sister to paint the shop’s logo on the storefront window. You are an employee under the ABC Test as much as the bakery owner would love to insist you are not because you were hired for work in line with the usual course of business while your sister doing artwork is an independent contractor for doing completely different work. These tech companies are hiring employees to do work that is well within their stated business and willfully breaching the law by misclassifying them as contractors.

• Gig workers are not, by and large, engaging in work that is separate in an established trade to the tech companies they work for. In order to break even with all these platforms, workers have to put in long shifts - this is made especially worse considering the existence of Uber and Lyft leasing programs for cars and, for owners of their cars, the onerous cost of wear and tear maintenance for doing work for any of these companies. Gone are the days of mom hopping in to clock in a couple of hours during the week for spare cash. With Uber and Lyft setting rates and surge pricing, and increased competition from other drivers unable to find conventional work, earning rates are far lower than they are which means drivers and gig workers are almost exclusively doing work for a select few tech companies. If they are holding down other jobs on the side, they are almost always similarly-lower paying jobs even if they have flexibility.

Tech companies fail the ABC Test and willfully break the law to misclassify their gig workers to avoid paying them benefits and overtime. There are no health plans, no offset cost to using their own phones and cars, and no security or flexibility worth the high degree of labor being put in by these workers.

But that’s not all. You need to understand Assembly Bill 5, the law first drafted in 2018 by San Diego Assemblymember and proud labor champion Lorena Gonzalez which was passed and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in September of 2019. AB5 is…infamous. While it codified the ABC Test and is constitutionally-backed by the Dynamex ruling, it was originally written so broadly that it impacted several industries across the state and public outcry led to the passing and signing of AB2257 just the last September. With carve outs to sectors like freelance writing, videography, landscape architects, and so many others, AB5’s legislative fix is maybe not the most ideal, but it does address the shortcomings of what is essentially a new paradigm in labor law.

The tech companies actively working to exploit employees disagree with all this. They’re willing to flout state law and write their own and it’s why Prop 22 is on the ballot. Prop 22 sets a new, completely unworkable set of standards that would give a blank check to tech companies to continue to exploit. They say they cannot afford to comply with the law and pay their employees doing the hard, grueling work of maintaining essential services like transport and grocery delivery, yet they have collectively, as of mid-October 2020, spent $200 million on advertising and buying up endorsements.

Voters must see through this attempt by corporate America to rewrite the rules in their favor. California labor is not perfect and will need to be reworked for the 21st century - that much is certain. What is also certain is tech companies cannot be the ones responsible for rewriting those laws and something so vital as labor standards should not be litigated at the ballot box. This is the landmark fight for labor rights in our state. Vote no on 22.