Prop. 1 Passes … Barely

Episode Transcript

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. Well, it’s been a minute since election night, but we finally know the results of proposition one. Governor Gavin Newsom secured a big win after voters just barely passed his proposal for reshaping how Californians struggling with homelessness and mental illness get care.

Gov. Gavin Newsom: We’re here today celebrating, this journey, and the successful effort, to fundamentally reshape and reform the approach we take today.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: KQED politics correspondent Guy Marzorati breaks down what prop one is going to mean for the state.

Guy Marzorati: So there was two big ideas or pieces of prop one. The first was a bond measure, a $6.38 billion bond to build more residential treatment facilities and supportive housing. The second was changing up how California spends its current mental health money, specifically earmarking more of that money for housing.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Why did it take so long for the results of prop one to be called?

Guy Marzorati: I think just because this election was held close and that’s hello with like 7 or 8 L’s, 7.2 million Californians cast a ballot on prop one. Right now, the latest margin I’m seeing, it’s around 30,000 votes. The fact that we count votes county by county. You know, you have some counties, Alameda, that are just take longer than others to count. And I think that’s why we saw such a drawn out process. Now, weeks after Election Day. We finally have clarity that prop one is passed.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Was it surprising to you, I guess.

Guy Marzorati: You know, I think of maybe if we were talking, like, six months ago. So this would have been surprising to have the margin be basically down to tens of thousands of votes. The yes side went into this campaign with a big coalition in support, a lot of big name support, certainly a lot of money compared to the no campaign. But I think by Election Day we knew this was going to be close.

Guy Marzorati: As we’ve talked about before, the electorate in this March primary skewed conservative. And supporters of prop one really knew by the time March 5th came around that they were going to be in a really close fight here. The other reason that maybe makes sense to me is that this measure might have just been really confusing for voters. It was a bond. Yes. It was also a restructuring of the Mental Health Services Act.

Marva Diaz: It’s always easier to run a ballot measure that is extremely simple and clear to voters.

Guy Marzorati: When I’ve talked to political strategists like Marva Diaz, she said, voters might have simply been like, this is too much to comprehend. I’m voting against it.

Marva Diaz: The more they have to research the more they have to unpack, the more they have to figure out themselves when filling out their ballot the harder it is to. Get them to vote yes.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I know that Governor Gavin Newsom was one of the primary proponents of prop one. What is he saying about this win?

Guy Marzorati: Yeah, the press conference was just kind of like a big, sigh of relief from Newsom. He had been really quiet for the week since this, you know, vote, had been counted. He kind of kept a low profile, but he was out there Thursday celebrating the win in Los Angeles.

Gov. Gavin Newsom: We’re here today celebrating, this journey, and the successful effort, to fundamentally reshape and reform the approach we take to address the issue of mental health and substance abuse and disorder and challenges, that continue to vex us out on the streets and sidewalks and those that are suffering alone. If there’s.

Guy Marzorati: And really kind of vowing to win over skeptics, particularly folks who might have approached this and said, you know, we’ve seen bonds before and they haven’t really made a dent, he really tried to make an argument that he’s going to be able to get this money out quickly, you know, get shovels into the ground to build residential treatment facilities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom: And it is foundational if this is going to work, that everybody step up their game.

Guy Marzorati: He also turned his focus to California counties, because the counties are going to be the ones implementing proposition one. And he really tried to put kind of like pressure on them to, okay, we pass this. Now you all have to make this work.

Gov. Gavin Newsom: It requires now, for the first time in state’s history that counties have one single plan. One single plan to address this issue. And it’s not just a plan.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Who else was for prop one at the press conference in support?

Guy Marzorati: It was a broad coalition, and that was reflected in who was there, on Thursday. You had folks working in support of veterans. This measure set aside a specific amount of money just to build supportive housing for veterans with behavioral health challenges. You had a representative from the California Professional Firefighters. You might think firefighters, you know, what are they? What’s their interest in mental health?

Guy Marzorati: Well, firefighters and other first responders often have to show up on the scene when someone is dealing with a mental health crisis. And the same is true for medical groups representing doctors, representing hospitals who spoke in favor of this, because they feel like oftentimes the problems in California’s mental health infrastructure trickle down and end up with folks just showing up in the emergency room.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, just coming back to Newsom briefly, Guy, why is prop one in particular so important for him to do this and to to get this thing passed?

Guy Marzorati: Newsom as governor has really taken on solving this intersection between homelessness, mental health, substance use, addiction, as like where he wants to leave as his legacy in this state in terms of policy. So prop one is really just the latest iteration of of programs that Newsom has been pushing now for years. It’s includes care courts. That was, you know, a controversial thing last year, trying to create this new civil court system to compel some people to care.

Guy Marzorati: It included changing conservatorship laws, again, making it easier to to take maybe a little bit tougher approach, pushing people, into care who are really going through the most severe crises on the streets. And prop one is the latest in this. And I think for Newsom, it answers the question of a lot of critics had about care courts, which is if you’re going to compel someone into care, where are they going to live during that time?

Guy Marzorati: If you’re going to go sleep under a bridge when the treatment is done at night. Is that really the best way for people to be receiving care? So I think Newsom looked at prop one is like, okay, this is the answer I’m going to have for this housing to go along with the care.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Coming up, we’ll talk more about how prop one will change mental health care and hear from the no campaign. Stay with us.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I know this has been described as really like an overhaul of how California currently cares for people with serious mental illness. I wonder if you can like explain guy, like, how exactly is this going to be a change from how things currently work?

Guy Marzorati: Yeah. So it’s still going to be run largely through counties. You know, counties are going to get 90% of the revenue from this, behavioral health services tax. The tax is not going to change. But the revenue, 30% of it, like I said, is now going to have to go towards housing so counties can use that to build new affordable housing with supportive services. They can use it to maybe operate some of the housing that’s getting built through this bond.

Guy Marzorati: They can use it for things like rental subsidies for Californians who have mental health or substance use issues, who maybe are risk of becoming unhoused. So that is a shift. And because that pot of money is not growing. There might be programs that are funded currently that as more of that money moves towards housing, maybe there will be programs that no longer have the funding they once did.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: You are sort of alluding to some of the concerns of the opponents here Guy, which I do want to talk about. I mean, prop one one pretty narrowly. Remind us who was against prop one and what were their arguments?

Guy Marzorati: So you did have the, you know, I guess, official no. On one campaign, which was largely led by service providers who feared that as more money gets shifted towards housing, there’s going to be less for existing programs. And you also heard, you know, from civil liberties groups to argued that that bond would fund lock facilities. They didn’t like that. Disability rights California for example, was against this.

Guy Marzorati: On top of that, you had groups like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association more on the right, that fiscally conservative view that the state just should not be borrowing this much money, at this time. But there wasn’t coalition or really coordination between these groups. And the no. On one campaign was really a volunteer effort. They didn’t raise money, and they knew from the beginning there weren’t going to be able to kind of compete with the yes campaign.

Paul Simmons: Virtually no advertising other than some Google and social media and such. So, yeah, I mean, it didn’t exactly stand up to a Super Bowl ad, but, you know, that’s what we had.

Guy Marzorati: Paul Simmons, who helped lead the no campaign before that he was with Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. He told me any program that has the word peer in it is in danger. So basically support programs that are led by Californians to have, you know, these shared lives, experiences with behavioral health challenges. He looks at those as being particularly vulnerable.

Paul Simmons: You know, the governor and Steinberg both said, now, you know, there aren’t going to be program cuts. And we believe that was an outright blatant lie. But we’re going to try to hold their feet to the fire to make sure that things aren’t cut.

Guy Marzorati: Prop one supporters and even the governor said that there’s more money available for these types of programs from other sources. You know, there’s efforts to get Medi-Cal to pay for these kind of services.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, let’s talk about what is next year, guys. Prop one is, I feel like, very complicated and and it’s ambitious. And now it’s passed. What are you going to be looking for? To see whether this is working? And could it, you think, make a real difference?

Guy Marzorati: It’s hard to say. Now, I do think this is a historic investment in terms of, you know, just the amount of money that the state is, is putting forward. But we’ve seen historic investments in supportive housing in the past that haven’t totally moved the needle or changed conditions on the street just because the housing that gets built is only one piece.

Guy Marzorati: There’s people who are still falling into homelessness. And here, of course, you’re talking about a very specific population of people experiencing homelessness. This isn’t for the entire universe of of unhoused people in California. This is a really specific size of people who have these compounding, you know, substance use or mental health challenges.

Guy Marzorati: I do think Newsom is putting forward a pretty clear strategy when it comes to prioritizing. His argument is that the folks who really need this the most are the ones most visibly suffering. I guess time will tell, but Newsom is certainly laying down the marker that this is how he wants to be judged as governor of California.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, Guy, thank you as always for breaking this down. We really appreciate it.

Guy Marzorati: My pleasure.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was Guy Marzorati, correspondent with KQED Politics and Government Desk. This 20 minute conversation with Guy was cut down and edited by a senior editor, Alan Montecillo. Maria Esquinca is our producer. She scored this episode and added all the tape music courtesy of the Audio Network.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: If you want to know how to support our show and keep local news thriving here at KQED, consider becoming a KQED member. Just go to KQED.com/Donate. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thank you so much for listening to the Bay. I’ll talk to you next time.