Californians overwhelmingly voted yes on Proposition 36 in November of 2024, supporting a ballot measure that many saw as a solution to rising theft and drug crime. Over a year since it passed, counties like Sacramento are grappling with how to pay for growing treatment and incarceration expenses without funding help from the state.
The costs could mean counties will have to pay millions of dollars more each year as they struggle with already strained budgets.
The measure turned some misdemeanor drug and theft crimes into felonies and lengthened certain prison sentences. That, in turn, put pressure on local court systems and law enforcement departments.
It also created what is called a “treatment-mandated felony”. It gives certain offenders the option of getting their charges dismissed upon the completion of optional mental health or drug-related treatment.
At the time of its passage, the California Legislative Analyst's Office determined the increase in court specific work and county jail populations would result in millions of dollars in increased costs for counties.
The governor’s budget outlook for the 2026-2027 fiscal year does not include any money for Proposition 36. When the state released its January budget, California Association of Counties CEO Graham Knaus criticized the lack of funding.
“You can't implement anything for free,” he said. “If there's an expectation of a higher level of service, then it needs to be funded, or else counties can't carry it out and it's guaranteed to fail.”
Sacramento County Supervisor Rich Desmond told CapRadio that the county is already facing a “fiscal armageddon,” with a looming $101 million deficit for the 2026-2027 fiscal year. He added that asking counties to fund increased services is unrealistic long-term.
“They’re expecting us to do a lot more with the same amount of money,” Desmond said. “That’s just impossible.”
Why was the measure not funded?
Scott Graves, budget director with the California Budget and Policy Center, said Proposition 36 is what is called a “ballot box budgeting measure”.
“The authors of the measure did not provide, as a part of Prop 36, any way to pay for these new services,” Graves said. “As a result, they ended up putting state and local policy makers in a pretty tough position.”
Though Graves could not comment on why exactly the authors did not include a funding mechanism, but did say generally that measures with tax increases attached to them are sometimes not popular with voters.
Worry over delivering on treatment, law enforcement costs
Desmond with Sacramento County said he’s particularly concerned about the county’s ability to fulfill its commitment to offering drug or mental health treatment to those who qualify for it under Proposition 36.
Desmond said the county will be on the hook for millions of dollars in overall fees. It’s already looking at $800,000 in administration fees for current cases related to treatment under Proposition 36. Those costs account for things like additional court reporting and case assessment.
“That’s a very small percentage of what our (total) costs will be. We haven’t been able to quantify yet what the ultimate costs are going to be for treatment,” he said.
He said the financial strain translates to longer wait times for services, which means people who qualify for care may not get what they need.
“There’s a real bandwidth problem in terms of the amount of money and the amount of programs we have,” he said.
Tim Lutz, the county’s director of health services, said his department is also worried about getting people into treatment in a timely manner.
“We’re working on how we address capacity downstream, recognizing that Prop 36 is just one additional tool in our toolbox to help get people to engage in treatment,” he explained.
Still, Lutz said the county has been working on increasing capacity for outpatient treatment since before the passage of Proposition 36. By 2027, Lutz said the county hopes to go from 196 treatment beds to 472, which has already been budgeted for.
“We’re doing everything we can to invest in the system,” he said. “It takes time to build these out.”
When it comes to law enforcement, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper has said since the measure’s passage that the county’s jail system has been impacted by the new case load, and can’t keep pace without more resources.
“Accountability comes at a cost,” Cooper said in an X post from August 2025. “Currently, local jails are bearing that burden without the necessary funding to make it sustainable.”
Critics not surprised
Those who opposed Proposition 36 are seeing the measure work out as they feared it might.
AJ Albano is an organizer with Decarcerate Sacramento, a non-profit that has maintained Proposition 36 would fail on its promise to connect people with treatment and increase the incarceration rates in the county unjustifiably.
“There are not enough substance use disorder treatment beds in Sacramento, and that is the case across California,” he said.
Albano pointed to an ACLU study which found Proposition 36 is impacting county governments in different ways.
According to the study, in November of 2025 only 771 people had been ordered into treatment out of approximately 9,000 cases statewide. For Sacramento County specifically, only 270 out of 900 Prop 36 drug-related cases had been referred to treatment, and only 20% of the people referred remained in their programs after 90 days.
Some critics of Proposition 36 say that some of the logic behind the measure has another key flaw.
Epidemiologist Flojaune Cofer, who is also a candidate for Sacramento County’s District 1 Supervisor seat, said forcing people into treatment often doesn’t yield successful outcomes.
“ Instead of focusing on the requirement and forcing people into treatment, we need to focus on making sure that when people are ready for treatment, we're ready to treat them,” Cofer said.
