The right is in an uproar over Governor Gavin Newsom’s refusal to earmark new state funding for Proposition 36, California’s recently passed crime and drug treatment initiative. During a press conference this week, Newsom made it clear: the state would not be allocating additional money to implement the measure. Instead, he put the responsibility on local governments—the same cities and counties that pushed for this initiative in the first place.
“There were a lot of supervisors in the counties that promoted it,” Newsom said. “So, this is their opportunity to step up. Fund it!”
For those following this issue closely, this should come as no surprise. Newsom was a vocal opponent of Prop 36. He warned that the initiative would lead to more incarceration for low-level offenses and reverse progress made under previous criminal justice reforms, particularly Proposition 47. Now that voters passed Prop 36 with a commanding 68% of the vote, some accuse Newsom of sulking because the electorate didn’t follow his lead. But what’s actually happening is more complicated—and more revealing.
State Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, characterized Newsom’s stance as petulant. “He is being absolutely recalcitrant because the voters didn’t vote the way he wanted them to and the way he told them to,” Niello said. “He’s taking his football and going home.” Niello and other lawmakers—Republicans and some Democrats—are now demanding that the state commit $250 to $400 million to fully implement the measure. Their requests include funding for treatment programs, probation, and county administrative costs.
But here’s the thing: Proposition 36 is an unfunded mandate, passed with the implicit assumption that the money would materialize after the fact. That assumption is crumbling under the weight of economic reality. State leaders are grappling with a budget shortfall, worsened by national economic headwinds and, yes, the effects of Trump-era fiscal policies. That matters. As State Sen. Scott Wiener noted, “We’re in a tough budget situation, and we don’t want to throw people off of health care.” Every new expenditure must be weighed against deep trade-offs.
Even more ironic is that part of the reason Proposition 36 passed so easily was precisely because it didn’t come with a hefty price tag. It was sold to voters as a way to address public safety and drug addiction without the sticker shock of a tax increase. That political sleight of hand is now catching up with its proponents. They’re discovering that implementing a tougher-on-crime policy—one that increases prosecutions and potentially incarceration—requires serious funding.
Proposition 47, passed in 2014, aimed to reduce incarceration and reallocate those savings toward mental health and substance abuse treatment. By reclassifying many drug and theft-related offenses as misdemeanors rather than felonies, the state saved money on prison costs. Those savings were then used to invest in alternatives to incarceration.
Prop 36, on the other hand, begins to undo that framework. It adds new penalties and makes more people eligible for incarceration, thereby reducing the very savings Prop 47 created. That means fewer diversion dollars and more pressure on the system—more people under supervision, more court cases, more strain on jails and county probation departments.
Newsom has pointed out that $127 million was already made available through Prop 47 funds to support treatment and diversion programs, including those impacted by Prop 36. But this amount falls far short of what counties say they need. The question isn’t whether there’s a funding gap—clearly, there is—but rather, who should be responsible for filling it.
Graham Knaus, CEO of the California State Association of Counties, framed it this way: “Counties are simply asking for the state to abide by the will of the voters.” But this presumes the will of the voters included a blank check from the state—a presumption never made explicit in the measure’s language.
This entire debate exposes the central contradiction in the politics of public safety: lawmakers want to look tough on crime, but they don’t want to pay for what that toughness actually costs. After decades of mass incarceration, California began to learn a hard lesson—that you cannot incarcerate your way to safety, especially when you don’t have the resources to do so. That’s what drove reforms like Prop 47 in the first place: a combination of fiscal necessity and moral clarity.
Prop 36 ignores that lesson. Instead, it indulges the oldest tactic in the political playbook—fear. Crime is rising, people feel unsafe, and instead of investing in upstream solutions, we double down on punitive measures. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t ask for a return to carceral policies and then balk at the cost. That’s exactly what Republicans and some Democrats are doing now, and they’re blaming Newsom for refusing to clean up their mess.
If anything, this moment is a test of political integrity. Newsom told voters what he believed: that Prop 36 was flawed, that it would be expensive, and that it would reverse hard-won progress. He didn’t hide that view. The counties and politicians who backed Prop 36 didn’t lay out how they would pay for it—perhaps because they assumed the state would simply foot the bill. That’s not how responsible policymaking works.
California faces tough fiscal decisions. We can’t pretend that criminal justice policy exists in a vacuum. Every dollar spent on jailing more people is a dollar not spent on housing, education, or healthcare. If counties now find themselves unable to implement the measure they championed, it’s not Newsom who failed—it’s the architects of Prop 36 who sold the public on a policy without preparing for its cost.
