🌟 The Beacon

After Proposition 50: Time to Get Back Up

By Loren Dean, Chairman of the Libertarian Party of California

Let's be honest, nobody in Sacramento truly wants fair elections. They hate any move in the direction of fair elections, and they'll move to kneecap anything that reduces their grip on power.

Proposition 50 was the latest in a long train of abuses Sacramento has heaped on the people of California. This one, though, is especially egregious, because it strikes at the foundational relationship of western governance. Chair Loren Dean, speaking to a reporter from CalMatters, said Prop 50 is "about the principles of representative democracy in California. Representatives don't get to pick their constituents; a system where leaders get to choose who they lead is feudalism, not democracy."

Fortunately, this view is shared by Lars Mapstead, head of the Voting Rights Foundation. Lars contacted the LPCA shortly after the Prop 50 election was set and suggested a team-up. With a generous donation from Lars, the LPCA and the Voting Rights Foundation sent out almost 10,000 physical mailers opposing Prop 50. We targeted registered Libertarian voters in Butte, Fresno, Riverside, and San Diego counties--counties that would be immediately affected by Prop 50. It's been a while since the LPCA has undertaken a mass mailing like this. It's good to dust off the concept, and we're deeply thankful to Lars and his crew for making it possible.

Did it matter? Yes! Obviously, Prop 50 passed anyway, but that's not why it mattered. Imagine an Olympic figure skater stepping onto the ice. The lights are bright, the crowd is watching, and seconds into her routine—she slips. It’s a hard fall, the kind that makes everyone gasp. But she doesn’t quit. She gets up, finishes her routine, and earns respect not for perfection but for perseverance. Because that’s what professionals do. They keep going. They make people believe again.

Libertarians in California, it's time to believe again. It's time to get up and keep going. We're some of the only ones left that can. When early polls showed Prop 50 could be beaten, GOP leaders promised a fight. Big donors lined up. Kevin McCarthy talked about raising $100 million. Voters were told that the integrity of representation was at stake (because, in fairness, that's true).

But as the campaign got hard, those big talkers disappeared. Spending evaporated. Messaging stopped. The supposed “defenders of fair districts” went silent while Governor Newsom’s Yes on 50 campaign plastered the state with ads.

When you stop fighting for your principles, you stop being relevant.
The Libertarian Party has principles. We're one of the only parties that do. We can't stay silent in the hopes that some other party will bring us along. We can be allies, certainly. But we're not sidekicks. California's two big parties are facing total exhaustion, an utter lack of faith in their own message. So they rig the system, and rig it some more, and rig it some more.

Libertarians have seen this before. When the two old parties game the system for power, they forget that what’s worth winning is trust. Californians still want honesty, competition, and courage.

The skater who falls and gets back up earns applause.
The one who quits mid-routine just clears the ice for someone else.
And Libertarians of California, that someone else can be you.

🗽 LPC Resolution on President Donald Trump

The Libertarian Party of California has adopted an official resolution addressing recent actions and policies under President Donald Trump. Our position reaffirms the core Libertarian principles of limited government, individual liberty, free trade, and peace.

👉
Read the full resolution here

LA’s New Rent Control Plan: Good Intentions, Bad Results

While the political messaging centers on “affordability” and “stability,” these changes will almost certainly produce the opposite effect over time. Economists across the ideological spectrum, including many who support tenant protections, have long agreed on this: rent control reduces housing supply, reduces mobility, reduces quality, and raises prices in the rest of the market.

Los Angeles is repeating this cycle yet again.

📉 What the New Policy Actually Does

1. It stabilizes rents—but only for people already in RSO units.
This helps those lucky enough to have these older apartments. A tenant currently paying $1,200 for a pre-1978 unit will see smaller yearly increases than before.

2. It increases pressure on small landlords.
Under the new rules:

• Utilities are rising faster than CPI
• Insurance premiums in LA have exploded
• Trash fees and inspection fees are way up
• Minimum wage mandates raise operating costs
• Compliance costs continue to grow

But allowable rent increases don’t keep pace, especially for small “mom and pop” owners.

Tenants who used to experience multi-year periods of stability may now start receiving annual increases because landlords fear falling behind.

3. It discourages maintenance and reinvestment.
When revenue is capped but expenses aren’t, the math becomes simple:
Fix-it-later becomes fix-it-never.
Older RSO buildings—already aging—will fall further into disrepair.

4. It pushes some owners out of the market entirely.
Expect to see:

• More Ellis Act withdrawals
• More conversions (TICs, condos, SFR sales)
• More units sold to owner-occupants
• Fewer rentals available in an already tight market

Every withdrawal shrinks the supply of relatively affordable rental housing.

5. It signals to developers: “Stay away.”
Even though new construction isn’t covered by RSO, developers see the writing on the wall:
if the city is willing to tighten rent control this aggressively today, what might it do tomorrow?
Capital flows toward certainty.
LA just became less certain.

🏗️ Does This Build Housing? No. And That’s the Problem.

City leaders talk about balancing renter needs with landlord realities. But you can’t “balance” a policy that:

• Protects existing tenants in place
• Reduces maintenance incentives
• Shrinks supply over time
• Discourages new housing construction
• Pushes up rents in non-controlled units
• Increases market rigidity and reduces turnover

Rent control stabilizes tenancies for some, but destabilizes the overall housing market.

🔶 Why Libertarians Oppose Rent Control

Libertarians oppose rent control not because we don’t care about renters, but because it does not work.

It is one of the most widely studied policies in economics, and the verdict is overwhelmingly consistent. Rent control:

• Reduces housing construction
• Reduces available rental units
• Accelerates deterioration of older buildings
• Reduces mobility
• Raises rents in the uncontrolled market
• Encourages black markets and side deals
• Benefits a lucky subset of tenants at the expense of everyone else
• Discourages exactly the thing we desperately need: more housing

Libertarians support abundant housing, fast permitting, lower construction costs, more by-right zoning (clear, objective rules so projects that meet them can be built without special hearings), and market competition—because these actually increase supply, improve quality, and lower prices.

Rent control does none of those things.

🎭 Why Politicians Love Rent Control Anyway

The political incentives are obvious:

• It produces immediate benefits for current renters.
  Those renters vote.
• The harm comes years later and is diffused among future renters.
  Those people don’t vote yet.
• It allows elected officials to “do something” about high rents without confronting zoning reform, CEQA abuse, union cost premiums, ULA tax impacts, or bureaucratic delays.

The structural reforms that actually create housing are politically difficult.

So politicians choose the policy that creates the best headlines, not the best housing outcomes. Rent control rewards politicians today while harming the city tomorrow.

🏁 Conclusion: The Road to Bad Housing Is Paved With Good Intentions

Los Angeles is trying to fix a housing crisis caused by decades of supply restrictions by doubling down on another supply restriction. It’s the policy equivalent of trying to put out a fire by restricting the number of fire extinguishers.

The Council may be acting with sincere concern for tenants—but the effect is predictable:

• Less housing
• Less mobility
• Higher rents
• Worse buildings
• More scarcity

If Los Angeles wants affordability, it needs abundance.

And abundance only comes from one thing: building more homes.

💸 LA County Pays Its CEO $2 Million… to Keep Working

LAist recently revealed that Los Angeles County quietly approved a $2 million settlement for County CEO Fesia Davenport—despite the fact that she was never fired, demoted, or asked to leave. She remains fully employed, running a $45-billion county bureaucracy.

Large payouts to public employees usually follow wrongful-termination lawsuits. Here, there was no lawsuit and no termination. The money was awarded for “reputational harm, embarrassment, and emotional distress.”

The supposed source of that distress? Measure G—a voter-approved reform that turns the CEO job into an elected office beginning in 2028. Davenport claims that the Board’s decision to place the measure on the ballot “irrevocably changed” her career and future plans.

That’s an extraordinary new standard: a public official receiving millions because voters approved a structural change to government.

The Board of Supervisors approved the settlement behind closed doors and provided no public explanation of liability. This suggests a troubling trend—using taxpayer-funded settlements to resolve political disputes instead of engaging in transparent debate.

Government isn’t supposed to be a risk-free career track insulated from voter-approved reforms. But in Los Angeles County, it seems bureaucratic comfort now carries a seven-figure price tag—paid by the public.

Read more:  LAist coverage of the Davenport settlement and Measure G

Welcome to another issue of The Beacon. It is always a pleasure to put this together, and it would be an even better weekly email if people and local Libertarian chapters would share their news and photos.

— Pat Wright