Tax increases and bond measures have to go through the voters. The alternative is to get enough of the legislature, including probably some in Central Valley, to agree to cut a bunch of other more popular programs in order to fund it out of the general fund.

What does California do with all its income?

Same shit. Different State. Maybe a little extra compared to a Red State or a smaller State, and on a larger scale. You can dig into it here: https://ebudget.ca.gov/

Props 13 and 8.

Highly recommend Paradise Lost by Peter Schrag. Raising revenue requires supermajority voter approval in most cases. A huge chunk of the budget is already allocated by voter mandates and the legislature fights over the scraps.

I dug into this a bit since these comments were just confusing, but apparently Prop 13 required tax increases to get a 2/3 majority of the legislature.

So it seems like Prop 13 just fucked California.

Correct. What is the point of having a representative government with a legislature if you just forcibly remove the lynchpin of power for that type of government?

That's the point. Props 13 and 8 were part of the republican anti-government movement often memorialized by Norquist's remark about making government small enough to drown.

The motivations and rhetoric are before my time. What’s leftover is just this stupid counterproductive set of laws undermining the legislature’s ability to legislate.

> Did it have to be funded by a proposition?

Yes.

> Could the CA legislature not have passed a law?

To fund a long-term capital project? No, for a number of reasons. First, at that time, the CA legislature couldn't practically fund anything reliably (budget process is Constitutionally mandated to be annual, and at that time required a 2/3 supermajority to pass, which caused regular budget crises.) Second, and more importantly, structurally, to fund major capital projects, debt financing is required, and California cannot, Constitutionally, issue bonds without voter approval. Prop 1A was a legislative initiative amendment -- that is, the legislature had to pass a bill to put it on the ballot -- to secure that approval.