California's November 4, 2014 ballots are rich with local tax and land use measures. It's a sign of fiscal pain in local governments, and of credible optimism that voters can and will accept taxation -- though we'll find that out for certain in a few days.
At the state level, Gov. Jerry Brown is campaigning indirectly for reelection by stumping for Propositions 1 and 2, the water bond and "rainy day fund" measures. As of Saturday the Sacramento Bee reported Brown's television ads had yet to mention directly that his continued governorship requires voter ratification.
Two Web sites have taken on the exhausting task of presenting local ballot questions one by one: The invaluable Ballotpedia has a huge collection of sub-pages for California statewide and local measures on all topics. CalTax has posted an astonishing table describing local tax measures.
Our own attempt to pick only the planning and taxation measures most closely related to land use came up with more than 70 of them. At best we can only scratch the surface of a list like that.
So what we have for you here are selected spoonfuls from this river of electoral complexity, picking up some of the big clusters of measures that you just knew were going to form in the especially self-involved metropoli, and looking around at some other clusters of less urban measures.
