Race Data Ban on California Ballot: Props 53 and 54 address infrastructure funding and racial data collection
July 25, 2003
California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has assigned proposition numbers to a pair of ballot measures that will appear on the Oct. 7 ballot with a proposed recall of Gov. Gray Davis.
The proposed constitutional amendment to ban government from collecting racial data will be called Proposition 54, Shelley said. Another to dedicate part of the state budget every year to infrastructure, such as schools and highways, will be known as Proposition 53.
He also announced that 500-word ballot arguments supporting the two initiatives are due at his office by 5 p.m. July 31. Those arguments, along with 250-word rebuttals by opponents due Aug. 7, will appear in pamphlets mailed to voters before the election.
Proposition 54 is UC Regent Ward Connerly’s racial privacy initiative, a measure to drop the race category from government forms and forbid agencies from classifying students, contractors or employees by race, ethnicity, color or national origin.
Connerly, who led the successful 1996 Proposition 209 to ban race as a factor in public education, hiring and contracting, argues that the categories are divisive in California’s increasingly mixed society and amount to a form of segregation.
But opponents of the measure, including the UC Board of Regents and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, argue the initiative will make it hard to track health, education and economic trends. Attorney General Bill Lockyer said it will add a new barrier to investigating racial profiling and hate crimes.
Diane Schachterle, coordinator for the racial privacy campaign, said July 28 the group has been working on a pro-Proposition 54 ballot argument for more than a week.
Proposition 53 asks voters if they want to expand significantly the funding for the state’s physical infrastructure, earmarking up to $108 billion more for schools, highways, parks and water projects during the next 20 years.
The idea stems from a proposal by Assembly members Keith Richman (R-Chatsworth) and Joe Canciamilla (D-Pittsburg) to dedicate 1 percent of the state budget to infrastructure starting in 2006 and increase it to 3.75 percent a year over 20 years. Democrats passed the idea last year to win Richman’s vote for the 2002-03 budget.
For more information, readers can search the California Secretary of State at www.ss.ca.gov. Official Proposition 54 information can be found at www.racialprivacy.org. Arguments against Proposition 54 are at www.informedcalifornia.org. Read Assembly Constitutional Amendment 11 that produced Proposition 53 at www.assembly.ca.gov. (Select 2001-2002 session)
— Jim Wasserman
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