also advocated for e-cigarettes to be taxed like tobacco products, as a way to deter vaping and smoking, and to pay for health-costs caused by tobacco use. Two years later in 2017, voters passed Prop. 56 with a nearly 2/3 majority, collecting $1.7 billion in new tobacco taxes which was spent on anti-smoking programs and funding Medi-Cal payments for the poor. Ma also identified the cannabis industry as "the largest shadow economy in California" with "hundreds of millions of dollars that disappear into an underground cannabis economy". Her tireless efforts to regulate the industry, develop systems to "track and trace" all marijuana in California, and to develop legal banking mechanisms for marijuana businesses earned her the nickname of "chief marijuana tax collector". Tax relief for citizens and small business After 2015's Valley Fire in Lake County left four dead and nearly 2,000 buildings destroyed, Ma proposed a new law (enacted the following year) that granted some tax relief to businesses that suffer losses from a natural disaster like the Valley Fire. Ma has also actively supported California's Earned Income Tax Credit to give cash back to low-income individuals, and promoted expansion of the program to minimum wage earners and independent contractors. Clean government reforms Within months of joining the Board of Equalization, Ma became "very, very frustrated" with the agency's fiscal conditions and mishandling of state tax accounts. She called for the formation of an Auditing and Oversight Committee, and when she became Chairperson in 2016, initiated three external audits of the agency. The audits exposed a culture of mismanagement, nepotism and political use of state resources. Ma co-sponsored legislation to toughen campaign reporting requirements for BOE members. She then led the effort to ask the Governor to appoint a public trustee to take over the agency, and called on CA Attorney General Xavier Becerra to assign independent legal counsel for the agency. Ma laid out a list of reforms which was incorporated into the "Taxpayer Transparency and Fairness Act of 2017", the biggest restructuring of the Board of Equalization in its 138-year history. The law was signed by Governor Jerry Brown in June 2017 and supported by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Senate President Kevin de León, and former BOE member Controller Betty Yee. Women and diversity Ma continued her lifelong commitment to promoting women and diversity in public office. In 2016, she received Emerge California's Woman of the Year