Credit: rawpixel.com
public domain CC0 photo.
With an estimated 65.7 of the votes counted, “Yes” is leading by 41,568.
Previous Story: Prop 1 Teeters on the Brink, Mental Health Community Largely Opposed the Overhaul of the System
By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Sacramento, CA – On Election Night, Prop. 1 stood at just 50.2 support. Governor Newsom put a lot of political capital into the measure that was billed as a way to revamp the mental health system.
While polling showed it was mainly Republican voters, wary of more expenditures, opposing it, the other group opposing it were mental health professionals.
Opponents of Prop. 1 believe that the measure is going down.
“The outcome will be uncertain for some time, but it is not looking good for Prop. 1,” said the campaign, Californians Against Prop 1.
“Prop. 1 was a monumental mistake, from its conception to its campaign,” said Paul Simmons, a director of Californians Against Proposition 1. “Gov. Newsom may now face one of his worst public defeats ever, failing at time when he’s been auditioning for a greater role nationally.”
Gov. Newsom collected at least $20 million into the campaign account for Prop. 1. Opponents only recently reached $2,000 in contributions, relying instead on a grassroots network of mental health care providers and advocates to get the word out.
Simmons said, “It seems that all the money in the world can’t sell a bad idea, and Prop. 1 was a bad idea. They had goals to improve some public services, but to do it, they would cut existing mental health care, and likely make the problem worse. That’s what made Prop. 1 inexcusable and, ultimately, unpopular enough to potentially fail.”
The measure worked by redirecting revenue from a special 1% surcharge on income over $1 million that was created in 2004 by Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act.
But critics charge that it “would have doubled the state’s share of that revenue, put the state in charge instead of counties and chopped at least 30% of local funds from mental health to different services.”
Simmons continued, “When voters passed the Mental Health Services Act 20 years ago, they meant what they said. They wanted a dedicated revenue source for community-based mental health care services. If Prop. 1 is defeated, that would be voters saying, for the second time, ‘HANDS OFF!'”
In 2009, during a budget crisis, the Legislature proposed to “seize half the revenues of the voter-approved MHSA to fill the shortfall, in a measure known as Proposition 1E. Voters rejected the idea handily, by more than 2-to-1.”
The campaign explains that the 2004 ballot measure that created the MHSA was co-authored by Darrell Steinberg, now mayor of Sacramento and then an Assemblymember, and Rusty Selix, who they describe as “a tireless and visionary advocate for mental health care.”
Selix passed away in 2019.
This year, Mayor Steinberg has been a lead advocate for Prop. 1.
The campaign charges that Steinberg has neglected “to mention his co-author Selix’s pivotal role in the creation of the MHSA and the system that has grown up in its wake.”
Simmons, who worked closely with Selix for years, said, “We knew from the get-go that Rusty would have said ‘hell no’ to Prop. 1. You don’t dismantle a system like this and cut people off from care to try to help the governor polish his reputation. We would see the defeat of Prop. 1 as Rusty’s Revenge.”
“This is not abstract for us,” Simmons said. “Many of us as Prop. 1 opponents work in the system and know intimately the chaos that the governor’s plan would have caused. It would be glorious and righteous to see Prop. 1 defeated.”
Meanwhile, the mental health community felt “disrespected” and ended up opposing Prop. 1.
Simmons said there were three main motives behind the mental health community’s opposition to Prop. 1:
1) Cuts to locally based programs (estimated at up to 40-50% cuts in mental health services locally)
2) State takeover versus local control, overturning the MHSA model
3) Conversion of the MHSA to a more coercive system, with more “forced” treatment and locked facilities
Legislative deliberations on two bills that became Prop. 1 (AB 531 and SB 326) were characterized by rushed, secretive processes and the freezing out of many local care providers and peer supporters. The community viewed the governor’s and legislators’ dismissal of their concerns as a profound disrespect for the services they provide, inspiring many to provide energy for the opposition to Prop. 1.
In its first statement on Prop. 1, in Oct. 2023, Californians Against Proposition 1 said the measure’s authors “might have achieved true consensus on this measure if they had not so crassly attacked the funding lifeline that so many programs depend on today, or introduced forced treatment into the bill at the last minute. Our community sees, hears and feels this as disrespect, and we fear for our bodily autonomy and freedom.”
Simmons concluded, “We have said for weeks that if Prop. 1 goes down, the reasons why would all come down to poor strategy and decision-making by the governor. He and his group made many strategic mistakes. But perhaps the most important was to disrespect the MHSA and the broader community of peers and providers. We have a principle in this community: ‘Nothing about us, without us.’ Maybe now the governor will hear.”
I know many mental health advocates and peers/consumers/clients that strongly opposed Prop 1 aa did I. It’s represents a slap in the face for people that believe that peers recover best through voluntary measures, not more forced treatment. In the end forced treatment tends to turn off many peers from the behavioral health system in general. Just like the vast majority of people, we don’t want to be subjected to involuntary services when they are more humane and evidenced-based services available. I have called Prop 1 ‘political expediency’ and ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’.
Another major flaw in Prop 1 is that there clearly is an insufficient workforce to staff locked facility beds. Just about every county in California is still dealing with major workforce shortages in their behavioral health departments and their non-profit and for-profit contractors. The most severe shortages exist in psychiatry and licensed clinical staff of all types. Locked beds are more expensive than their voluntary alternatives. Locked beds are temporary housing. It’s unlawful to keep people indefinitely in the type of locked beds Prop 1 would fund. Permanent supportive housing has been shown to greatly assist people in their recovery journeys. Just like everyone else people with behavioral health challenges want to live in places of their own choosing.
I was planing to attend the League of Women Voter’s Prop 1 forum at the Veteran’s Memorial Center, but came down with a bad cold at the last minute. I was gratified to learn that the League took an official position against Prop 1.
There is an extraordinary amount of arrogance packed into the comments in this article.
The present system is not working. Housing is needed for treatment programs. Counties and cities not only can’t build housing due to lack of resources, they are often obstacles to providing those residential facilities. To his credit, the governor was seeking to bring the state into the process of providing the necessary housing. Completely voluntary programs get very low rates of participation.
The failure of Prop 1 simply maintains the status quo, which is not anything to be proud of.
There is a level of absolute arrogance on the part of Prop 1 authors and their supporters. Their ultimate goal is to make it appear Prop 1 will significantly reduce the number of unhoused people in California. It will ultimate fail to achieve that goal. Studies have shown that the majority of the unhoused suffer neither from chronic mental health or substance abuse issues. The principal reasons why people lose their housing are either the inability to afford housing or traumatic life events.
It’s all about political optics. Newsom is intent on running for President in 4 years. He is eager to remove the unhoused issue from his political liabilities as are some of his political allies.
Agree that the present system is not working. The biggest problem is that it’s under resourced. Where I think we disagree is on the coerced treatment which becomes a de facto prison. Newsom should have worked with mental health people on a solution.
Here’s a good article that explains the problem with this solution: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/01/california-mental-health-care-policy
Here is another good article … the League of Women Voters who vigorously oppose Prop 1.
https://lwvc.org/ballot-measure/prop-1-2024/no-on-prop-1/
There is a sliver of hope remaining for the opponents of Prop 1.