Why Californians Can't Afford the Fine Print in Prop 45

By Catherine Garoupa

October 6, 2026

Highlights

• Proposition 45 may sound good at first but it looks a lot less appealing once you read the fine print.

• If it passes, Prop. 45 would fast-track approval of a long list of polluting projects.

• Here in the Central Valley, where we suffer from some of the worst air quality in the country and high rates of polluted drinking water, voters should pay attention.

Election season is in full swing, and this November’s ballot is packed with measures that can be hard to make heads or tails of. Proposition 45 is one that may sound good at first glance but looks a lot less appealing once you read the fine print.

Prop. 45 would fast-track approval of a long list of polluting projects. Here in the Central Valley, where we suffer from some of the worst air quality in the country and high rates of polluted drinking water, voters should pay attention. Allowing the widespread application of herbicides, expanding freeways, and building more data centers with less public oversight will make these challenges worse.

Prop. 45’s backers claim less public oversight will make life more affordable. What they won’t tell you is the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates simply implementing this measure will cost $100 million OR MORE each year. If this measure passes, our cities, counties, and other public agencies will spend up to a billion dollars just on implementation, costs taxpayers will incur before a long list of other additional costs are transferred to Californians.

Staff of the Regional Council of Rural Communities reviewed Prop. 45, and they concluded the measure shifts costs and risks onto communities and the city and county agencies that serve them. In short, Prop. 45 makes it easier to build damaging projects, which improves corporate bottom lines. But it does nothing to backfill public coffers to account for the additional impacts these projects will have with less public oversight and weaker environmental review.

Despite what you may be seeing in TV ads or on social media, it’s also important to note that this ballot measure doesn’t actually guarantee a lower cost of living for any of us. Nothing in this measure’s 41 pages of fine print requires project developers to charge less for rents or mortgages, utilities to bring down our electrical bills, or otherwise make life more affordable for our communities.

Prop 45 Raises Taxpayer Risk for Polluting Projects

Prop. 45 also increases taxpayer risk when it comes to footing the bill for the types of large, polluting projects that would be fast-tracked with less oversight under the measure.

For example, the EPA classified the Purity Oil Sales site in Malaga, south of Fresno, as a Superfund cleanup site back in 1983. The taxpayer-funded cleanup at the site still falls short of allowing the property to be reused for another purpose. To date, at least $18 million in taxpayer dollars have gone into remediating the property. With Prop. 45 in place, we can expect to see more pollution and more costly cleanups thanks to a looser approach to environmental review for the project types covered by the measure.

If a dairy biogas digester (one of the project types covered by Prop. 45) increases air pollution and drives up truck traffic, frontline Central Valley communities will be left to pay the price in the form of higher medical bills and reduced life expectancy. Those costs will also land on taxpayers in situations where such families rely on MediCal to address childhood asthma, cancers, and other health concerns that come along with worsened air quality.

Prop. 45 prioritizes the speed of construction over the health of our communities. Just as importantly, the weakened environmental review process under Prop. 45 takes away one of the only tools frontline communities have to protect their children from the increased pollution these projects will bring.

Clean Air and Water Protections Under Federal Assault

Our clean air and clean water laws are currently being actively weakened at the federal level. If we layer Prop. 45 on top of these federal changes, the safeguards we all depend on to make our air and water clean and our children healthy will be even less effective. It’s more important than ever for Californians to keep our state protections strong, especially in our region, which is already overburdened by pollution.

Prop 45. is being funded by PG&E and Southern California Edison, data center developers, and oil companies so they can build warehouses, data centers, and projects that emit toxic pollutants with less public oversight.

Standing in opposition to this measure are more than 450 organizations focused on protecting public health, civil rights, and clean air and water. The No on Prop. 45 coalition includes groups ranging from the League of Women Voters and the American Lung Association to the Middle-Class Taxpayers Association, Central Valley Partners, and the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. Please join us in protecting our communities. Vote no on Prop. 45.

About the Author

Dr. Catherine Garoupa is executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition.