I hope enough of us see through the measures.

California DSA has a pretty good voter guide, can't say I voted with them 100%, but it was a very insightful read. https://www.californiadsa.org/voterguide#propositions

Prop 45 is an initiative statute backed by the California Chamber of Commerce that makes sweeping changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Prop 45 creates a fast-track version of CEQA for a broad range of “essential” projects, including housing, transportation, energy, water, healthcare, schools, broadband, and public-safety infrastructure.

CEQA can be and is regularly abused to delay housing, transit, clean energy, and other necessary infrastructure at the expense of working class Californians. We don’t default to defending all regulatory and permitting processes just because they give the government power over private business. This is a genuinely thorny issue, with many costs and benefits and bad actors on both sides that can be difficult for socialists to disentangle. CEQA does desperately need further reform. Prop 45 sets fast timelines. It also limits agencies' obligation to study feasible alternatives and restricts the evidence and remedies available to courts reviewing approvals for a broad range of housing and infrastructure projects. Beyond this, it gives much of the housing it fast-tracks weaker labor standards than the other “essential” projects it covers.

For socialists, the key question we care about here is who gains power when review is weakened? As certified Bad Guy Alec Baldwin says in The Departed, “cui bono?” A good reform would accelerate democratically planned affordable housing, transit, and green infrastructure, while preserving workers' and affected communities' power over pollution and development. Prop 45 instead applies broad deregulation across many kinds of private and public projects, concentrating this power in the hands of developers themselves. There’s a reason for this. This reform was written by and for some of the most rapacious capitalists in the state.

The Yes campaign is heavily financed by the Building Industry Association, Chamber of Commerce, Edison, Realtors, developers, and billionaire cutout Building a Better California, a veritable rogues gallery of California politics. The No campaign includes most environmental groups and the state building trades. The latter is notable: the building trades will generally support nearly all construction. The old joke is they would pave over the Pacific Ocean if there was a project labor agreement.

California has already undertaken CEQA reform via AB 130 and SB 131, which broadly exempt urban infill housing from CEQA review. Prop 45’s new reforms use the word “essential” to bring in drastic new changes: covering not only apartments and transit but highways and road expansions, subdivisions, private medical-office buildings, major water systems, power infrastructure, and more. Expanding urban housing and giant infrastructure projects present radically different environmental problems, and need different regulatory regimes. We need more housing and transit; that doesn’t mean gutting regulation on highways and data centers. CEQA has been abused by wealthy homeowners, yes, but it has also been a vital tool for working class communities fighting warehouses, freeway expansions, industrial pollution, contaminated sites, and infrastructure that capitalists and more politically powerful actors want to dump in their communities. The answer is to make it harder for wealthy NIMBYs to block socially useful housing and transit, not to strip the ability of under-resourced working class Californians to fight environmental harm.

If passed, this proposition can only be legislatively amended at all by a 2/3rds vote of the legislature. Any defects or unintended consequences would therefore be incredibly difficult to fix through the ordinary democratic process. California history is littered with examples of poorly worded propositions creating seemingly permanent unintended negative consequences.

CEQA needs reform; California needs a faster process to allow our state to build housing at the needed scale. The housing crunch has been incredibly damaging to working class Californians and their ability to live in this state. CEQA needing further reform doesn’t mean developers and the Chamber of Commerce should be writing that reform. Socialists should support targeted reform, not less reform. This means by-right approval for affordable/social housing, transit, and clean energy. We should support greater public planning capacity; strong labor standards; and targeted limits on bad-faith litigation from wealthy and well-connected homeowners who want to block affordable housing and public transit. But we still need community and environmental protections, as well as a democratic process for development. Prop 45 is not the solution. We recommend a No vote.