Prop 5 will help local leaders hand out bigger checks to government employees under the guise of public works, warns Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Ass’n spokesperson Susan Shelley in this Opp Now exclusive Q&A. With major ambiguity and little accountability, the measure will ease through almost any kind of local bond that fits the new, open-ended "infrastructure" definition—while existing budgets are siphoned up for salaries. What’s more, "housing" under Prop 5 now includes down payment handouts.

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Silicon Valley—perhaps the only place where interviewing an AI bot is as normal as walking—is a longtime exemplar of innovation. Below, pausing on local politics, our managing editor Lauren Oliver and Lyra Rufino-Maceda (executive director of Menlo Park's Chesterton Academy of St. James) discuss how the classical framework can enrich and enlighten our busy, tech-filled lives. An Opp Now exclusive.

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This November’s Proposition 5 would lower the approval threshold for local infrastructure and housing bonds from 66.6% to 55%. The result, says Midcoast Community Council Vice Chair Gregg Dieguez, will be more local government bonds; and that is harmful to us all. An Opp Now exclusive op-ed by Dieguez, here expressing his own opinions.

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California Policy Center's Education Policy VP Lance Christensen breaks down questions to ask re: SJ Unified's $1.15 bn “facility repairs” bond measure: Where's our money going, exactly? What should be prioritized? And (as many Opp Now readers echo) can we trust SJUSD's fiscal discipline? An Opp Now exclusive.

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As Californians consider hundreds of local ballot measures, they hear (and mostly believe) an underlying narrative: elected officials and staff are doing their best to provide essential services with insufficient resources. It is this narrative that not only entreats for "yes" votes on local taxes and bonds, but also for state Proposition 5, which will make it much easier for cities and counties to borrow. But is this narrative true? An Opp Now exclusive from Cato Institute's Marc Joffe.

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Pat Waite of Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility says decreased population, fleeing young families, and our county’s already chart-topping tax rates make the wave of school bond propositions coming at us this November a bad idea. An Opp Now exclusive.

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Proposition 5 will blow a massive hole in Prop 13 and Prop 218 protections, said Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers' Mimi Willard to North Bay residents this summer. She warned that cutting voters’ threshold from two-thirds to 55% to pass housing and infrastructure bonds would trigger a tidal wave of tax hikes, with nothing to stop them except, perhaps, voter fatigue. Prop 5 could also let Fairfax property owners get slammed with a 30-year road bond. Will Sherman reports in this Opp Now exclusive.

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Says past Palo Alto mayor Lydia Kou: Sacramento completely failed at promoting housing production, yet still wants cities to comply with the “un-compliable” Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). In Part 2 of this Opp Now exclusive, Kou explains how cities that fail to meet the RHNA cycle midpoint quota by 2026 will lose control of the approvals process. Expensive, lousy projects will fall short of RHNA but still plague midpen neighborhoods with traffic congestion, environmental havoc, and an unraveling of the social fabric.

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According to former Palo Alto mayor Lydia Kou, it’s not only arrogance and sloppy math that undid RM4, the $20 billion housing bond that got unceremoniously yanked off the November ballot at the eleventh hour. In Part 1 of this Opp Now exclusive, Kou argues that the measure’s failure can be traced back to an impossible housing needs assessment figure, which was pushed through with little to no public input.

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Roberta Moore of San Jose's Housing and Community Development Commission (HCDC) chimes in on the City's proposed Seismic Retrofit ordinance, which is intended to keep our buildings structurally safe but—she says—could reap disastrous consequences for property owners, while failing to protect San Jose's most vulnerable properties. An Opp Now exclusive.

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According to SiliconValley.com, the city is considering an incentive plan that will waive business taxes and parking requirements for downtown businesses that purchase or lease office spaces downtown of over 1,000 sq ft. Former SJ CM and local business leader Johnny Khamis hopes it's the start of a new era of biz-friendly policies at 4th and East Santa Clara. An Opp Now exclusive.

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On his way to Milpitas last week for a meet-and-greet, presidential hopeful Chase Oliver—dubbed by the Rolling Stone as the “most influential Libertarian in America”—chatted with Opp Now's managing editor Lauren Oliver about some of Bay Area voters' biggest issues. The conversation, a special Opp Now exclusive, reads in its entirety below. (Psst: Stick around to the end for Oliver's #1 pick for your Libertarian reading list.)

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