Science
New drug's potentially fatal side effects obscured by 'soothing acronym,' doctors say
Seventy-nine-year-old Genevieve Lane volunteered to take the Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi in a clinical trial because she was forgetting words and misplacing her keys.
Infusions of the drug gave her headaches so severe they sent her to bed. A week after the third dose, she was at a restaurant with her best friend when her speech slurred and she had a seizure. Five days later she was dead.
An autopsy found that Lane died of a mysterious side effect that has a name that sounds like it might be part of an Italian opera, but has doctors on edge.
The complication called ARIA has nothing to do with music. It is a term adopted by an influential group of pharmaceutical executives and academic scientists to describe potentially fatal bleeding and swelling in the brain caused by drugs like Leqembi.
“Mom believed the drug would help slow progression of her memory problems or do nothing,” said Lane’s daughter, Yvonne Battaglia. “She didn’t know it might kill her.”
Genevieve Lane, 79, of The Villages, Fla., not long before she died in September, 2022. An autopsy blamed Leqembi, a drug for Alzheimer’s disease.
(Lane family)
Lane’s death, and that of two other trial participants, has raised concerns among some doctors, who question whether Leqembi’s risks are worth its benefits, particularly for the population of older adults it was approved for.
Some of these doctors are urging that a new name be given to the drug’s potential side effects to better alert healthcare professionals to its risks.
ARIA is short for “amyloid-related imaging abnormalities,” with imaging referring to the MRI scans needed to find the brain bleeding and swelling.
“Clearly, it is more than just an imaging abnormality,” said Dr. Matthew Schrag, a Vanderbilt University neurologist, who helped with an autopsy that concluded Lane died of brain swelling and bleeding that was likely caused by Leqembi.
“My feeling is that ARIA is too euphemistic of a term. It conveys that this isn’t serious, and it certainly can be,” he said.
Leqembi, known generically as lecanemab, is a monoclonal antibody that works to remove a protein called amyloid from the brain. It received full Food and Drug Administration approval in July.
Eisai, a Japanese drugmaker that has partnered with Biogen, is promoting Leqembi to doctors and people concerned about their memories.
“Get ahead & stay ahead for longer,” an Eisai website says about the drug. It also says that “ARIA usually occurs early in treatment and is usually asymptomatic, although serious and life-threatening events rarely can occur.”
In a recent article, a Stanford neurologist and his colleagues detailed their concerns about ARIA, which they called a “soothing acronym” for brain bleeding and swelling.
“It does certainly have the ring of something that a pharmaceutical company or public relations person would come up with,” Dr. Michael Greicius said in an interview.
Leqembi is approved for mild dementia and also a diagnosis known as mild cognitive impairment, where patients have more memory problems than others their age but can compensate and continue their daily activities. People with MCI have been found to be at greater risk for developing dementia; but in many cases, their memory problems stay the same or even improve.
The FDA has required that the company warn doctors about ARIA. The agency says the condition, which affected more than 20% of those taking the drug in a large trial, can be managed by requiring patients to get repeated MRI scans to look for bleeding and swelling.
“The FDA maintains that the benefits of Leqembi outweigh its risks when used according to the approved labeling,” said Dr. Teresa Buracchio, director of the FDA’s neuroscience office.
Libby Holman, an Eisai spokesperson, called ARIA “globally established nomenclature.”
Because of the risk of ARIA, some Los Angeles medical centers are taking extra precautions.
At Keck Medicine of USC, a neurologist is available 24/7 to take calls from families of those taking Leqembi, since a headache or sudden confusion can be a sign of ARIA, said Dr. Helena Chui, chair of the neurology department.
At UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, warnings pop up in a patient’s electronic health record to ensure that all medical staff know the patient is taking Leqembi, because it can interact with certain other medications to make brain bleeding far worse.
And at all three medical centers it takes more than a single doctor to prescribe the drug. Each patient’s case must be reviewed by a panel of doctors and other staff — similar to how complex cancer cases are evaluated.
“We want to keep safety first,” said Dr. Keith Vossel, UCLA professor of neurology. “This is the most complicated, complex drug that we’ve prescribed in the dementia field.”
Other physicians say they won’t prescribe the drug.
“If there was a medication that worked, I would be the first person to use it,” said Dr. Clifford Sigel, a neurologist in Santa Monica. “But I won’t be using this in my practice.”
He pointed to a large clinical trial of Leqembi that led to its approval. It found that patients who took the drug saw their memory decline 27% more slowly — or less than half a point on an 18-point cognitive scale — than their counterparts who took a placebo. Sigel and other doctors doubt patients or their families would notice the difference.
Eisai’s Holman disputed claims that the drug does not work. She noted that a panel of outside experts convened by the FDA had voted unanimously that trial data confirmed its clinical benefit.
The name ARIA traces to July 2010 when “turmoil ensued” at an international scientific conference that the Alzheimer’s Assn. holds each year, according to an article by two scientists working in the field.
The FDA had proposed that companies testing new anti-amyloid drugs exclude any volunteer from clinical trials who had more than two brain microbleeds, according to an Alzheimer’s Assn. report. The tiny hemorrhages are sometimes found in healthy people and those with Alzheimer’s or other illnesses.
The agency also said it would require any volunteer who experienced a brain microbleed during the clinical trial to cease taking the drug.
The companies and academics working on the trials viewed the new FDA requirements as “excessively restrictive,” said the report by the association, a nonprofit that has become a powerful force in dementia science.
The industry and academic scientists feared the FDA proposal would stall research on the experimental drugs, the report said, and limit their use.
The drug companies asked the association to debate the FDA’s guidance at its Research Roundtable. Pharmaceutical and medical testing companies can become members of the roundtable by paying the association a $50,000 annual fee.
The association said that “one key question” taken up by the roundtable was whether ARIA was a temporary symptom of the new drug — much the way nausea and hair loss are side effects of chemotherapy — or evidence that anti-amyloid medicines may have more serious adverse effects. That question was never settled.
“Current knowledge doesn’t provide definitive answers to this critical question,” the association said in the 2011 report explaining the roundtable’s work.
Despite the unknowns, the roundtable proposed that volunteers be allowed into the trials even if they had as many as four brain microbleeds. The group said volunteers could keep getting the drug infusions if they developed brain bleeding as long as they did not have significant worsening of symptoms such as headaches and confusion.
The roundtable also proposed calling the brain bleeding and swelling ARIA.
The FDA “subsequently revised and updated the original advice…in a manner consistent” with the roundtable’s suggestions, wrote three of its members.
“Scientific evidence at the time led the workgroup to propose excluding people who have four or more microbleeds from clinical trials,” the association told The Times in a statement. “The FDA agreed.”
The association declined to answer questions on whether the name ARIA should be changed.
An FDA official told The Times that the industry group’s advice was just one of the factors the agency considered before it revised its 2010 guidelines.
More than a decade later, little more is known about why ARIA occurs or how to recognize it.
One problem is that a patient with ARIA can look like they’re having a stroke. And when stroke patients are taken to an emergency room, the first treatment doctors often consider is a clot-dissolving medicine called tPA, which can make brain bleeding worse.
That’s what happened to a 65-year-old woman taking Leqembi in a trial who arrived at a Chicago ER with stroke-like symptoms, according to a report published in February 2023. Doctors gave her tPA.
“As soon as they put it in her, it was like her body was on fire,” the woman’s husband said in a news story in the journal Science. “She was screaming, and it took like eight people to hold her down.”
The woman died, and an autopsy showed extensive bleeding in her brain, leading doctors to conclude the combination of the two drugs may have caused her death.
Knowing about that risk, Southern California doctors have been teaching emergency room staff to find out if patients thought to be suffering a stroke may be taking Leqembi.
“We’ve had to train and discuss this with the ER, the neuroradiology team and urgent care,” said Dr. Sarah Kremen, who leads Cedars Sinai’s Alzheimer’s clinical trial program. “You must ask this person, ‘Are you taking this medication?’”
An FDA database that collects reports of adverse drug reactions from doctors and others shows 23 deaths of patients taking Leqembi.
Holman at Eisai said it would be incorrect to assume the deaths were caused by Leqembi. She noted that Alzheimer’s patients have a higher risk of death because of the natural course of the disease.
In the large trial, less than 1% of patients died — the same rate whether they were taking the drug or the placebo.
Buracchio at the FDA said the agency takes “all adverse event reports seriously.” But she said the agency’s evaluation of the reports “must take the treated population into account,” which in this case is typically older or elderly adults.
To teach doctors about ARIA, Eisai created a website called understandingaria.com. It tells doctors that ARIA “usually resolves without intervention or treatment modification.”
In a brochure for healthcare providers, Eisai assures physicians that infusions may continue if an MRI turns up evidence of microbleeds as long as there are four or fewer and that the discomfort doesn’t disrupt the patient’s activities.
For Genevieve Lane, an MRI discovered four brain microbleeds before she started taking Leqembi in the trial.
After Lane died, an autopsy found more than 30 microbleeds in her brain, including some that could not be seen on the MRI, according to a report in Nature Communications.
The report’s authors, who included Schrag at Vanderbilt, questioned whether the pre-treatment limit of four brain microbleeds was stringent enough and called for higher standards.
The FDA told The Times that the agency had reviewed the available data and had not identified a specific number of preexisting microhemorrhages that would make it unsafe for patients to take anti-amyloid drugs like Leqembi.
“However, we will continue to monitor the accruing safety data,” the agency said.
Other doctors have questioned what happens to the memories of those who suffer ARIA, even if the bleeding and swelling appears to resolve.
Dr. Madhav Thambisetty, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Aging, said he was concerned by a report in a French medical journal about two women with mild dementia who experienced serious ARIA during a trial. One suffered severe seizures; 11 months later, her memory score dropped by nine points on a 30-point scale. The other patient developed a brain bleed described as “massive”; she lost a significant part of her vision, and her memory score declined by 12 points on the same scale.
An FDA scientist reviewing reports of patients who suffered high numbers of microbleeds in the clinical trial also noted the possible harm to their cognition in her January 2023 report on Leqembi.
One of the patients that Dr. Deniz Erten-Lyons pointed to was a 68-year-old man who had four microbleeds before starting the infusions. After treatment, he began to lose his vision and was hospitalized because of a seizure. An MRI found 96 microbleeds.
Thambisetty said he and Dr. Rob Howard of University College London wrote to Eisai last year to request information about what happened to the cognition of those who suffered ARIA in trials.
Eisai has not responded to their request, he said.
“I’m concerned about the lack of full and transparent reporting,” Thambisetty said. “It’s really important to know what happens to these patients.”
Holman said the company’s analysis of trial data showed that ARIA did not impact cognition.
“Eisai is transparent,” she said. The company follows guidelines for sharing clinical data established by PhRMA, the industry trade association, Holman said.
Greicius, the Stanford professor, also asked Eisai for trial data that would break down results for each volunteer to better understand ARIA and whether patients benefited as more amyloid was removed from their brains.
The response from Eisai, he said, was, “Thanks for your interest, but we can’t release the data.”
A trio of satellites set to launch early Tuesday will give wildland firefighters more time to respond and scientists more information about fire-prone regions across the globe.
The launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base is the first phase in a constellation called FireSat that will eventually cover the globe with 50 satellites collecting high-resolution imagery of fires and conditions on the ground every 20 minutes.
Earth Fire Alliance, the nonprofit group behind FireSat, got the project off the ground with $69 million in grants from the Bezos Earth Fund, Google and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
San José-based Muon Space built the satellites. Muon and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection are both FireSat partners.
The satellites use advanced thermal sensors to detect heat and can pick up signals from fires as small as a beach bonfire, as well as cooler fires that have been smoldering for days, according to Michael Falkowski, lead scientist at Earth Fire Alliance. That information will help fire officials, including the Los Angeles and Los Angeles County fire departments, understand whether blazes are growing, where they are headed and how much soot and smoke they are generating.
FireSat’s infrared instruments detected this small roadside fire in Medford, Ore., during a 2025 test flight.
(Muon Space)
“If we can differentiate between a smoldering fire and a flaming combustion fire, it really has a big impact on how we can understand the air quality emissions coming off the fire,” Falkowski said.
Fires that burn at low temperature produce more harmful gases than hot fires. Think about a campfire. When it’s burning hot with bright flames, there is relatively little smoke. When it’s smoldering, it produces lots of thick, white or gray smoke.
Wildfires work the same way.
A hot, fast-burning fire has enough oxygen and heat to burn with more complete combustion, producing less smoke for every pound of wood burned.
Earth Fire Alliance will provide data from these first three satellites in the next few months to Cal Fire and fire agencies in Oregon, Texas, Australia and Portugal. Cal Fire will share it with Southern California fire agencies.
The network will also turn its sensors on in the Amazon Basin for the Brazilian nonprofit Amazon Environmental Research Institute.
Cal Fire should begin receiving data from the scientists later this year, according to Falkowski, who joined Earth Fire Alliance last year from NASA, where he was an earth science program manager running the agency’s fire science program.
Instruments on the satellites will be able to detect fires the size of a shipping container, and distinguish between hot, intense wildfires and cooler, smoldering ones.
(Muon Space)
Falkowski said the new FireSat satellites are a big improvement over existing ones because they will be able to see smaller fires with better resolution and distinguish low-intensity “cool” fires from high-intensity hot ones.
“The satellites are really designed to measure fire across the entire temperature profile, so we can see cool fires all the way up to really hot fires,” he said.
That kind of granular information is important for emergency responders in the field and planners who make decisions about calling for extra help or ordering evacuations.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operates three satellites that can detect a fire somewhere inside a square 1,230 feet across.
In contrast, instruments on the FireSat satellites will be able to detect small brush and roadside fires 16 feet across.
Cal Fire officials have long embraced new technology to get ahead of wildfires in recent years, testing autonomous firefighting helicopters and partnering with UC San Diego to use artificial intelligence to filter images from a network of more than 1,200 cameras on lookout towers and mountain tops. The Alert California program is able to spot smoke in a video and sends automated messages to one of 21 agency command centers across California.
In 2025, Alert California sent out automated warnings before authorities even received 911 calls from the public 51% of the time, according to Phillip SeLegue, staff chief of Cal Fire’s intelligence program.
A worker at Mountain View-based Muon Space puts the final touches on a wildfire-detection satellite scheduled to launch Tuesday on a SpaceX rocket. The satellites will be tracking fires across the globe.
(Muon Space)
FireSat will help incident commanders get better information more quickly, and, unlike fire-spotting aircraft, the satellites can linger over a fire for days or weeks and aren’t hampered by high winds or smoke.
Travis Medema, chief deputy for the Oregon State Fire Marshall, said his office will use FireSat to plan escape routes and monitor fires. “If we can fight these when they are small, we feel we will be more efficient and can protect Oregonians,” he said.
One expert noted that turning satellite data into information useful to firefighters and forestry managers will take some time. The FireSat data will “be amazing for fire nerds, but how and whether it helps individual fires remains to be seen,” said Joe H. Scott, founder of Pyrologix, a wildfire analysis firm based in Missoula, Mont. “Right now, we are not basing decisions on where satellites tell us a fire is,” Scott said.
Pyrologix develops wildfire risk management models for federal agencies, local governments and utilities. Scott said FireSat’s high-resolution data will help him build better prediction models that take into account weather, drought, plants and the history of fires in a region.
California voters will decide 14 statewide propositions in the Nov. 3 election, measures placed on the ballot mostly by either powerful interest groups or lawmakers that will affect the lives of millions of Californians.
While a proposed tax on state billionaires has dominated headlines, voters will also have a chance to weigh in on a number of consequential issues, from healthcare to voter identification requirements and more.
Californians are accustomed to legislating by the ballot and often face a list of propositions. But even by the standards of the state’s direct democracy process, the 2026 election stands out. The campaigns supporting and opposing the ballot measures have already collected more than $100 million in contributions, and are expected to use their money to inundate the television airwaves, livestreams and social media feeds and to flood mailboxes with glossy campaign mailers over the coming months.
Here are the measures on the Nov. 3 ballot:
Proposition 1: The Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026
Spurred by the state’s affordable housing shortage, state lawmakers are asking voters to approve an $11.25-billion bond to boost affordable housing construction around the state.
Advocates say the funds would help build more than 40,000 shovel-ready affordable homes that are unable to move forward because of a financing gap and help preserve thousands of other existing units.
Proposition 1 includes specific funding for high-need groups, including $1.25 billion for a veterans’ home loan program, $1.15 billion for supportive housing for homeless people, $350 million for student housing at state universities, $450 million for farmworker housing and $200 million for Native American tribes.
“In California, we don’t turn away from the needs of our people — we meet them head-on,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement about the measure. “We are giving voters the power to help shape the future of housing in our state. This bond is about building communities, expanding access and affordability in California, where every family has a fair shot at a place to call home.”
Some Republicans took issue with the measure’s title — “The Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026” — arguing that it included veterans to have broader appeal while doing little to actually help homeless veterans.
“It’s a sad thing to say that you have to use the veterans as bait to get the people of the state of California to approve an $11-billion bond, and I just think that’s shameful,” said Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield), an Army veteran. “Call it what it is. It’s a homeless bond, and it does include some veterans’ benefits, but it is not a veterans bond.”
Proposition 2: Save for California’s Future Act
This measure would give California lawmakers more flexibility over state spending and allow them to save money that could otherwise go back to taxpayers.
The measure, supported by Newsom, seeks to exempt deposits into state savings accounts from a spending limit that voters adopted through a series of ballot measures dating back to the late 1970s, and to increase the share of tax revenue that can be put into the rainy day fund.
Under an existing state appropriations restraint, also known as the Gann Limit, lawmakers cannot spend more than an amount determined by a formula that takes annual tax proceeds, changes to the population and cost of living into consideration. Tax revenue above the limit must be divided between schools and refunds to taxpayers.
The measure could incentivize lawmakers to save more money because funds tucked away in the rainy day fund would no longer be considered expenditures counted toward the spending limit. By allowing lawmakers to set aside more money that is not subjected to state spending limits, it could also allow them to hold onto money that otherwise would be returned to taxpayers under current law.
This proposed constitutional amendment was placed on the ballot by state lawmakers.
Proposition 3: Fund schools and healthcare
If passed, this proposition would make permanent an existing tax on high-income Californians.
The existing tax, passed by voters in 2012 and extended in 2016, is set to expire in 2031. It applies to people who earn more than $360,000 for single filers, $721,000 for joint filers, and $490,000 for heads of household. It adds between 1% to 3% to these high earners’ personal income tax rates.
According to the initiative text, the funds are largely earmarked for local school districts and community colleges, with some portion of the money going to California’s rainy day reserves — which the state uses to prevent cuts to healthcare and other services when revenues decline. The measure says revenues cannot be spent on state bureaucracy or administrative costs.
The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office expects the measure to bring in between $5 billion and $15 billion annually, depending on how the stock market is performing, with the amount expected to grow over time.
Proposition 4: Public financing of campaigns
This measure would allow the state and local governments to offer public campaign financing to candidates running for elected office. Candidates receiving the funding must abide by expenditure limits and adhere to the criteria set by statute, ordinance or charter to demonstrate broad support, such as demonstrate a large number of small dollar contributions.
None of the public campaign financing can come from funds designated for education, transportation or public safety. The financing cannot discriminate based on party or whether a candidate is a challenger or an incumbent. The public funds cannot be used for legal costs, fines or to pay back personal loans to a campaign.
This measure was placed on the ballot by the California Legislature and governor.
Proposition 5: Recall elections
This measure would change the way recall elections are conducted in California. Under this proposed constitutional amendment, during a recall election, voters would decide solely whether a politician should be removed from their elected position. If the recall is successful, that office would remain vacant until it is filled in accordance with existing law — either by a separate election or by appointment.
Under current law, voters make two separate decisions during a recall election: Whether to remove the subject of the recall from office and, if they are booted, which candidate running to replace them should fill the position. The candidate who receives the most votes wins, even if they receive far less than 50% of the vote.
The proposed constitutional amendment would also allow the recalled politician to run in the next election to fill the vacancy, though they cannot be appointed to their former post. Under the current system, office holders targeted in a recall are barred from being a candidate to replace themselves in that same election.
The proposal comes in the wake of the unsuccessful, Republican-led recall campaign against Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, which in part tested voter sentiment about his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the sponsors of the recall-reform measure was Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), who was recalled from office in 2018 after he voted to increase gas taxes for road repairs, legislation pushed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. Newman won back his seat in 2020.
This proposed constitutional amendment was placed on the ballot by the California Legislature.
Proposition 37: Homeownership loan program
Proposition 37 would create a down payment assistance program to help middle-class Californians buy a new home.
The measure, spearheaded by former state Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg, would allow middle-class California residents — defined as anyone who makes less than 200% of an area’s median income — borrow most of their down payment for a new home that they plan to live in. It is designed to boost construction of single-family homes.
A down payment is traditionally about 20% of the purchase price of a home. If passed, the measure would create a state-administered loan program that offers qualified homebuyers a second mortgage of up to 17% of a home’s sale price.
The proposition would allow the California Housing Finance Agency to issue up to $25 billion in revenue bonds to administer the program.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office does not anticipate the measure to result in direct state or local costs because the costs are meant to be covered by homeowners’ mortgage payments.
Proposition 38: Immunology research bond
Proposition 38 asks voters to approve an $8.4-billion bond to support research in the burgeoning fields of immunology and immunotherapy, which study the human immune system and how it can be used to prevent, treat and cure diseases.
If approved, half of the funding would go toward the creation of a new immunology and immunotherapy research institute affiliated with the University of California. The other half would fund research grants for other California-based universities and nonprofit medical research institutions to study potential treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.
The measure has a built-in discount program for Californians — it requires that any technology or drugs developed from bond-funded research be sold to California patients for a price at least 20% below the national average.
Backers of the proposal include the Alzheimer’s Assn., National Multiple Sclerosis Society and other healthcare groups. Supporters argue the funding would facilitate research that could save lives and save patients “billions of dollars in health care costs by preventing and curing a range of debilitating diseases and illnesses,” according to the initiative text.
Proposition 39: Voter identification
Proposition 39 would require Californians to show government-issued identification every time they vote at the polls.
Currently, Californians must affirm under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens and provide information to verify their identity, such as their birth date, driver’s license or Social Security number, when registering to vote, but they don’t have to present identification when they cast their ballot.
Under this measure, voters would also need to present government-issued ID each time they vote in-person at the polls or, if voting by mail, provide the last four digits of a “unique identifying number from government-issued identification” that matches the one they provided when they registered to vote. California would be required to provide free voter ID cards on request, and state and county election officials would be required to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens by using government data.
The voter ID measure has support from Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), who has framed it as necessary to prevent voter fraud and restore trust. It comes as President Trump is pushing for stricter voter identification requirements and severe limits on voting by mail.
Democrats and voting rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, oppose the measure, saying California’s elections are already secure — voter impersonation and noncitizen voting cases are rare — and that it would make voting harder for many eligible voters, including people who have changed names, move frequently or face housing instability.
According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the measure would make election administration more expensive, costing state and local governments anywhere from tens of millions to low hundreds of millions of dollars annually, plus tens of millions in upfront implementation costs.
Proposition 40: Billionaire tax
This proposition, supported by a healthcare worker union, would impose a one-time tax of 5% on taxpayers and trusts with assets valued at more than $1 billion.
According to a state-prepared summary of the measure, 90% of the tax revenues would be spent on healthcare and 10% would fund food assistance or education-related programs. California’s richest residents would be able to spread the payments over five years.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates it would generate “tens of billions of dollars” spread over several years, but would lead to an annual decrease in state income tax revenues of “hundreds of millions of dollars or more.”
Newsom has publicly opposed the tax, arguing it would lead wealthy residents to leave the state and lead to future budget problems. Other opponents include Planned Parenthood, the California School Boards Assn. and a nonprofit called Building a Better California that is backed by tech execs and venture capitalists.
Some billionaires have already proactively moved themselves or their businesses out of the state because of the proposal, which as written would retroactively apply to residents of the state as of Jan. 1.
Proposition 41: Requires limits and audits on new state special taxes
This is one of two ballot measures crafted by opponents of the proposed initiative to impose a new tax on California billionaires, and it would in effect undercut or curtail that wealth tax.
This proposed ballot measure would also prohibit any new state taxes from being excluded from the state’s current voter-approved spending limit. The proposed billionaire tax would have such an exclusion. If the billionaire tax proposal is approved by voters but this proposal receives more votes, the billionaire tax measure would be voided.
The measure would require the state auditor to conduct a financial and performance audit of proposed ballot initiatives and of the programs they fund. The measure would require audits of any program that would receive funding from the special tax in the proposed initiative to assess the efficiency of the program and recommend who ought to reduce its annual costs by 10%. If the measure passes, the costs of the audits would be paid via the revenues generated by the special tax.
This ballot initiative is one of two so-called poison pills to sink the billionaire tax that is being bankrolled by Building a Better California, which has raised well over $100 million from the state’s most affluent. The largest donor is Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, who has reportedly moved out of California because of the tax proposal. He donated at least $82 million to the group as of late June.
Proposition 42: Ban on new state personal property taxes
This is one of two ballot measures created by opponents of the proposed initiative to impose a tax on California billionaires, and it would in effect void that wealth tax.
This proposed ballot measure would prohibit new taxes on personal property, intellectual property, retirement accounts and other assets and would limit situations in which a ballot measure or state lawmakers can impose or raise taxes retroactively — both of which are essential parts of the billionaire tax initiative.
If the billionaire tax proposal is approved by voters but this proposal receives more votes, the billionaire tax ballot measure would be voided.
This ballot initiative is one of two so-called poison pills to sink the billionaire tax that is being bankrolled by Building a Better California, which has raised well over $100 million from the state’s most affluent. The largest donor is Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, who has reportedly moved out of California because of the tax proposal. He donated at least $82 million to the group as of late June.
Proposition 43: Voting thresholds for special taxes
The measure would prohibit local governments from imposing new special taxes unless the proposed tax receives approval from two-thirds of voters. The restriction also applies to citizen initiatives, which currently only need a simple majority vote to be approved.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. supports Proposition 43. The advocacy group has characterized the measure as an effort to “save” 1978’s Proposition 13, the landmark initiative that capped California property tax increases and required a super-majority of votes to approve most future tax increases.
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), who authored the legislation that became Proposition 43 — ACA 22 — opposes the measure and has urged Californians to vote against it. She said the only reason she crafted the bill was because it was a necessary bargaining chip to torpedo another ballot measure backed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. that would have devastated revenues for local governments and retroactively rescinded some local tax increases.
“I authored ACA 22 not because I wanted it to become law — but because it was the only path left to get the more dangerous initiative off the ballot before time ran out,” Wicks posted on social media.
Proposition 44: Regulate health clinic spending
If passed, Proposition 44 would require federally qualified health centers to spend 90% of their revenue on “program services advancing their charitable purpose” rather than management and overhead. Community clinics that fail to comply would be penalized, with fines placed in a state-managed fund to be spent on clinic workforce programs.
Advocates say clinics spend too much on executive pay and other administrative costs and not enough on patient care. The measure, which would dictate how clinics spend money, is designed to fix that. The measure is backed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, an influential healthcare workers union, which argues it will help hold clinics accountable.
In May, the California Primary Care Assn., which represents more than 2,300 community health clinics, sued to block the ballot measure. The state’s powerful doctors’ lobby, the California Medical Assn., also opposes the measure, arguing it would ban clinics from keeping funding in reserves and hamper their ability to upgrade equipment or expand to new locations.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that enforcing the measure would cost the government up to the low tens of millions annually, and that much of the cost would be paid for through penalties and fees charged to affected clinics. The office says the measure has “uncertain” impacts and could lead to clinic closures.
Proposition 45: CEQA reform
This proposition would amend the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and speed up the process for projects deemed “essential,” including certain housing, water, health, public safety, energy and transportation projects.
Jails, detention facilities and oil or natural gas production facilities would not be considered “essential” projects, according to the measure text.
If passed, the measure would set deadlines for public agencies to complete environmental review, allow expedited review of a project’s environmental impacts — currently, public agencies are required to consider a range of feasible alternatives to reduce environmental impacts — and establish deadlines for filing and resolving lawsuits.
CEQA lawsuits have often been used to block construction of housing in the state. For instance, in Berkeley, neighbors used CEQA — citing potential noise impact from partying students — to delay, for years, UC Berkeley’s construction of student dorms on People’s Park.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the state and local government implementation will cost in the tens of millions of dollars for the first several years. It notes the legislation would probably result in net savings in the long term due to reduced administrative and legal workload.
Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Phil Willon contributed to this report.
Science
July Fourth fireworks may bring ‘hazardous’ air quality to Southern California. What you need to know
L.A.’s love of fireworks makes for a colorful Fourth of July, with dozens of official celebrations and countless illicit explosions expected for the holiday.
But as each sparkler, Roman candle, palm and peony dissipates, it leaves behind a cloud of noxious gases, soot and finely ground toxic metals — some of which ends up in the lungs of revelers and passersby below.
Hazardous levels of air pollution are expected across central and southern Los Angeles County, northern Orange County, and Riverside and San Bernardino counties from 5 p.m. Saturday evening through 3 p.m. Sunday, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Unhealthy air quality is also expected in northern Los Angeles County and southern Orange County.
Pollution levels are expected to build from dusk onward Saturday, as light winds and increased firework activity lead to an increase in smoke, a South Coast AQMD advisory said. Soot and particulates will likely linger through Sunday afternoon before being dispersed by the wind.
Firework-related pollution can trigger coughs, breathing problems, asthma flares and heart attacks, according to Los Angeles County Public Health, and anyone experiencing severe or worsening cardiovascular symptoms like chest pain or difficulty breathing should seek medical attention immediately.
Pyrotechnics set off at home are even more likely to trigger cardiovascular problems, the American Lung Assn. says, as the burst of pollutants takes place closer to the ground.
July 4 and 5 are traditionally two of the worst days of the year for the region’s air quality, according to South Coast AQMD. This year’s celebration comes on the heels of a late June warehouse fire in Boyle Heights that released extraordinary amounts of soot and smoke across the county, on par with pollution generated by the previous year’s wildfires.
To limit negative health effects, the L.A. County public health department recommends avoiding strenuous physical activity and keeping doors and windows closed. As whole house fans and swamp coolers can suck additional pollutants inside, the department recommends using air purifiers or air conditioners as alternatives when possible.
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