Santa Monica's City Council is set to back three state ballot measures and oppose two others at its Tuesday, Sept. 8, meeting.

The agenda item, placed by Mayor Caroline Torosis and Councilmembers Dan Hall and Barry Snell, carries direct financial stakes for a city that declared fiscal distress in September 2025. All five measures appear on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

The sharpest local impact centers on Proposition 43. The measure would require a two-thirds vote, instead of a simple majority, to approve any local special tax placed on the ballot by voter initiative, the Santa Monica Lookout reported. The council's agenda item warns the change would narrow the city's remaining revenue options during declared fiscal distress.

The connection is concrete. Santa Monica's 2022 Measure GS, a transfer tax of 5.6 percent on property sales above $8 million, passed under the simple-majority threshold Prop 43 would eliminate. Future citizen-led tax measures would face a higher bar.

The city declared fiscal distress in September 2025, driven in part by more than $229 million in sexual-abuse settlement obligations. Torosis, then mayor pro tem, said at the time that the city owed it to survivors to address the claims but also owed it to residents to protect financial stability.

The council is also expected to oppose Proposition 39, a voter-ID measure. The agenda item describes the proposition as prohibiting citizens from voting without government-issued identification and requiring mail-in voters to supply the last four digits of their ID number on the return envelope. It would also direct election officials to verify that registered voters are U.S. citizens.

On the support side, the council backs three funding measures:

• Proposition 1 would authorize $11.25 billion in general obligation bonds for housing affordability, including $7.2 billion for affordable rental housing, $1.25 billion for veteran home loans, $1.1 billion for homeownership assistance and $200 million for local pilot programs cities and counties could access directly.
• Proposition 37 would authorize up to $25 billion in revenue bonds for down-payment loans covering up to 17 percent of a new home's purchase price for first-time middle-income buyers.
• Proposition 3 would extend existing tax rates on incomes above $361,000 a year, set to expire, to permanently fund schools and health care. The measure is estimated to generate $5 billion to $15 billion annually, with 89 percent going to K-12 schools and 11 percent to community colleges.

Four of the five measures carry a financial impact on Santa Monica policies, according to the agenda item. The council meets at City Hall.