This series contains legislation, campaign materials, records and documents detailing the history, contents, process and methods used to create, develop, fund, organize and secure voter approval for conservation finance ballot measures in California and Los Angeles County between 1984 and 1996.

These materials are historically significant because 1) they document how billions of dollars in new public funding were created in California and Los Angeles County to support acquisition, improvement and restoration of parks, natural habitat, beaches, trails, recreation facilities and other conservation purposes; and 2) they encompass a strategic model that became the basis for developing successful conservation funding ballot measures throughout the United States. These public funding measures were essential to creating a vast number of the iconic parks, natural lands, beaches, mountains, rivers, trails and recreational resources for which California and Los Angeles are known around the world.

These successful ballot measure campaigns created funding that permanently changed not only the landscape of California, but also landscapes counties and states in the west and throughout the United States. These efforts were successful because the leaders of these conservation ballot measures developed a model strategic approach based on research, polling and coalition-building, applied to both citizens’ initiatives and legislative ballot measures. They created the legislative and finance framework, methodology, partnership and campaign approach that led to numerous other successful environmental funding ballot measures for multiple purposes (transportation, mountain lion protection and others) in California in the decades following passage of Proposition 70 (1988).

These conservation finance ballot measures also provided the model for the State of Washington’s permanent conservation funding program; influenced Portland Metropolitan Area’s first park bond; and provided the model for Esther Feldman to initiate creation of The Trust for Public Land’s Public Finance Conservation Program in 1994, which has since resulted in over $35 billion in new conservation funding throughout the United States.