Tag Archive for: ballot initiatives

Explaining an Initiative to Fund Water Projects

/by

AUDIO/VIDEO: How do ballot initiatives bypass a negligent state legislature? Can ballot initiatives be used to fund water projects, so Californians will not have to experience water scarcity in the future? Can a ballot initiative be used to amend laws and regulations that have made it almost impossible to get approval and permits to construct water infrastructure in California? A 42 minute YouTube interview with Edward Ring on Mike Netter’s Town Hall.

How the People Can Fix California

/by

The deadline to file citizens initiatives for the November 2022 state ballot is this August, and not nearly enough has been done so far. Active measures submitted to the California Attorney General include the highly necessary proposition to “prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude,” along with one to “require earth sustainability training in public schools.” Because apparently we’re still coping with slavery in California, and our public schools are not already inculcating sufficient climate change panic.

Other active measures carry more substance, for example, affecting child custody cases, gambling, and medical negligence lawsuits. But even these, while important, are nibbling around the edges of policy. They will affect the lives of some people, and that may be good or bad, but everyday life in California will not change.

Meanwhile, in a state that once offered hope and opportunity to everyone, most Californians now struggle to survive. The privileged classes – seniors in homes they bought two generations ago, tech workers who learned to code, and the upper strata of public sector employees – exist to serve the elites, a generous handful of billionaires and centi-millionaires. For everyone else, life is tougher every year.

For every essential – homes, rent, tuition, gasoline, electricity – Californians pay the highest prices in America. Californians endure the most hostile business climate in America, and pay the highest taxes. The public schools are failing, crime is soaring, electricity is unreliable, water is rationed, and the mismanaged forests are burning like hell. And all of this can be fixed.

How the People Can Fix California

There is one option available to Californians that can bypass the state legislature, and that is via state ballot initiatives. The legal fees necessary to draft a ballot initiative vary depending on the complexity of the measure, but often run under $10,000. The fee charged by the California Attorney General is $2,000. That’s all it takes to get a state ballot initiative cleared for circulation.

If professional signature gatherers have to be hired, which is typically the case, the cost to gather signatures from voters onto petitions to qualify an initiative to appear on the state ballot is likely to cost over $5.0 million. But that cost must be weighed against the transformative potential of an initiative if it is approved by voters. California permits not only laws, but constitutional amendments to be changed via the initiative process. When you change the California constitution, you change fundamental rules. You not only enact new laws, but you can supersede existing laws that have done harm.

As conditions worsen in California, the arguments against ballot initiatives are increasingly unconvincing. Yes, a campaign to win voter approval of a ballot initiative in a general election can run in the tens of millions. But every two years, 20 senate seats and all 80 assembly seats are up for grabs in the state legislature. And every election cycle, the winning and losing campaigns dump millions into each of the races for these 100 contested seats.

Why bother? The machine is going to stay in control, whether it controls a mega majority in both houses of the state legislature, which it currently does, or a mere supermajority.

And then there are the higher offices. Who can forget Meg Whitman’s hapless 2010 campaign for governor, where she blew through a reported $178 million?

The money is out there. Whitman, along with Steyer, Zuckerberg, Hastings, and dozens of other wealthy Californians have made that abundantly clear. So at a cost of $12,000 apiece, put some options on the table in the form of ballot initiatives. Give the big dogs a bone to carry. They can’t pick it up if you don’t put it out there. Don’t worry about the bad guys emulating this strategy. They don’t have to. They own the machine.

If Meg Whitman had wanted to truly change California, for $178 million she could have sponsored an entire slate of initiative constitutional amendments. If the voters had liked what they were being offered, we would be living in a different and better state today.

New Volunteer Armies Defray Millions in Campaign Costs

Something that proponents of initiatives for November 2022 have available that was not present even two years ago is an awakened, bipartisan army of volunteers who mobilized to qualify the Newsom recall for a special election.

There are now hundreds of trained volunteer managers spread across the state, and thousands of trained volunteer signature gatherers. Their learning curve was steep on the recall, but by the end they had the hardware – booths, tables, signs, petitions, and a thorough understanding of the process. A little known fact is that in the final month before the signature gathering deadline, these volunteers had ramped up to a statewide production of over 100,000 signed recall petitions per week.

This prospect, the ability for trained, motivated volunteers to gather signed initiative petitions at a rate of up to a half-million per month, is a game changer. Skeptics have to consider the fact that the technology available, social media, emails, and websites for communicating and organizing, including the ability for any registered voter to download and print a petition, is only getting more powerful. And now, millions of Californians are aware of how to use this technology. More important, more than ever, they are motivated to use it.

The ability to conceive of ballot initiatives, do the legal research, and file them for title and summary, is a task that even small grassroots organizations can afford. The ability to get them on the ballot can be coordinated by multiple armies of signature gathering volunteers if they merely follow two rules, (1) don’t promote more than one ballot initiative on any particular issue, and (2) use identical petition forms and chose one firm to do the preliminary signature verification and manage the deliveries of signed petitions to the 58 county registrars.

Everything else is negotiable. Various grassroots groups competing for donors and volunteers is bound to be a fractious and challenging process. But as long as they aren’t circulating competing petitions, or trying to juggle two different petition processing firms, everything else can be worked out.

Imagine if Meg Whitman had used her considerable resources to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would repeal water rationing, and authorize a water infrastructure bond that would not leave implementation to the California Water Commission, but would instead limit their authority to actually funding specific, named projects: the Sites Reservoir, the Temperance Flat Reservoir, more desalination plants and water recycling plants on the Southern California coast, repair the Friant-Kern canal, and while we’re at it, detox the Salton Sea and turn the Los Angeles River back into a river.

Californians can and will realize that ballot initiatives can improve their lives. Creating water abundance instead of water rationing is just one example. What about a ballot initiative that would require the state to again sell logging rights to commercial timber companies and fast track the permitting process for new lumber mills, and do it in 12 months or less? Suddenly there is revenue to the state, free maintenance of the fire breaks and power line corridors, good union jobs, lower prices for lumber, and fewer fires as the forests are thinned back to healthy densities. What’s not to like, unless you’re a Sierra Club litigator who has gotten filthy rich destroying what once worked so well?

At present, the only transformative initiative that appears to be headed for submittal to the California Attorney General in time for 2022 is a school choice proposition. That’s a commendable effort, guaranteed to put the teachers union into a fight for their lives. But what about something to fix California’s mismanaged water supply and mismanaged forests? What about an initiative to stop in its tracks the burgeoning “anti-racist” racist industry that’s destroying the character of our youth and crippling the competitiveness of our industries? Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute is working on that, but more people need to offer him their support.

The possibilities are endless and inspiring. What about another try by the proponents of the failed Prop. 20, which would have allowed Californians to take back control of their streets? What about a thoughtfully crafted reform of California’s homeless policies, which to-date have merely poured billions into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats, powerful “nonprofits,” and construction developers, while making the problem worse?

We are running out of time. Why aren’t establishment Republicans, trade associations, and grassroots leaders working together, right now, to put together a slate of initiatives for November 2022? The filing deadline, late August of this year, is nearly upon us. How many ways will voters have a chance to fix California, before they have to wait another two years?

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Globe.

 *   *   *

Government Unions and California Ballot Propositions

/by

Californians voted on twelve state ballot propositions on November 3. On nine of these propositions, California’s government and private sector unions spent significant amounts of money, over a million in five cases, and over ten million in two cases. But of these nine, the unions only got their way on one of them, Prop. 19, which changed some of the rules on how property taxes are applied. And Prop 19 was not a high priority for the unions, with barely over $100,000 in contributions, mostly from Firefighter unions. The big bucks in favor of Prop. 19, over $41 million, came from the real estate industry.

And if it weren’t for Prop. 19, California’s unions would have logged a perfect record on November 3, losing every battle. The real story on November 3 is that California’s tech moguls, and big business, in that order, are willing and able to spend California’s unions into the ground when they decide that’s what is necessary to protect their interests. Before reflecting on the implications of that staggering fact, it’s worth having a closer look at some of the battles.

The chart shown below summarizes total spending in support and in opposition to the twelve ballot propositions on November 3. As reported by the California Secretary of State, unions, mostly government unions, spent $68 million on ballot propositions. That is based on information updated through October 17, and does not include in-kind contributions, so the actual spending was higher. The biggest fight, by far, was in support of Prop. 15, which would have required commercial properties to be reassessed at current market values for assessing property taxes.

It’s no secret why passing Prop. 15 was a priority for government unions. Ever since the legendary Prop. 13 was passed back in 1978, it has been blamed for government budget deficits in California. Leaving aside the fact that administrative bloat, mismanaged overtime, and financially unsustainable pensions are the real reason for budget deficits, or the fact that inflation adjusted tax revenues in California have always kept pace with population growth despite the impact of Prop. 13, the relatively low property taxes that businesses pay in California is one of the last, if not the last, competitive advantage left for business in what is otherwise the most hostile business climate in America.

Protecting California’s businesses, however, is not a priority these days for California’s unions. The California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) joined with their local chapters and other unions to pony up nearly $38 million to push Prop. 15. And joining these union in a rare defeat was over $10 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Advocacy PAC. Zuckerberg’s PAC, along with other Zuckerberg controlled entities, drenched the political soil across America this election season, including $400 million to “get out the vote” in key swing states. But when you’re able to spend $400 million the way most of us buy a cup of coffee, you can water the world.

As the last few election cycles are making increasingly obvious, if you pair the deep pockets of government unions with the even deeper pockets of big tech, you’re going to get whatever they want. But Prop. 15 was an existential threat that backed California’s businesses, big and small, into a corner. Apparently not all of them are ready to flee to Texas, because led by the California Small Business Roundtable that kicked in $31.7 million, they came up with just over $60 million in opposition spending. Prop. 15 failed, only getting 48 percent of the vote. This time.

There were other mega-fights on November 3, most notable the limited war waged by big tech against AB 5, which took the form of Prop. 22. Limited war, because instead of repealing AB 5, a smashmouth union power play that turned most of California’s over two million independent contractors into employees overnight, the big tech rideshare companies chose to only bail themselves out.

It wasn’t as if these companies didn’t have the wherewithal to come up with a more comprehensive reform. The war chest they amassed in support of Prop. 22 was almost ridiculous – almost, because nothing is ridiculous any more when it comes to the power of big tech – Uber kicked in $51 million, Door Dash threw down $51 million, Lyft added $47.5 million, Instacart was good for $31 million, and Postmates spent $11.5 million. All told, the rideshare industry raised $192.7 million to protect their interests.

Fighting against Prop. 22 were all the unions, with the biggest contributions coming from the SEIU and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Over $16 million of the $18.6 million spent against Prop. 22 came from unions, but it was a lopsided battle from the start. Prop. 22 passed easily, with 58.6 percent of the vote.

Another big spend by unions this election cycle was the SEIU’s support for Prop. 23, which would have imposed new regulations on dialysis clinics and presumably opened the door to unionizing them. But where the SEIU spent almost $9 million, the renal care industry spent a whopping $104 million, with much of this money coming from out-of-state.

One of the most visible of the propositions on the November 3 ballot was Prop. 16, which would have brought back affirmative action. It’s not clear why affirmative action is even required in California, since virtually every established institution in the state desperately adheres to proportional representation whenever possible. And while the unions came up with $1.7 million to support this bill, another $17.5 million came from private donors, including $5.5 million from M. Quinn Delaney – who along with her wealthy husband Wayne Jordan are among California’s premier limousine liberals.

The defeat of Prop. 16 is perhaps one of the most encouraging signs in the 2020 election, because despite being outspent by more than ten-to-one, the opponents prevailed. Californians saw Prop. 16 for what it was, a transparently racist meal ticket for trial lawyers, “equity and inclusion” bureaucrats, and the victim industry, masquerading as anti-racism. With only 42 percent of Californians voting yes, it wasn’t even close.

Another fight worth mentioning was the sad fate of Prop. 20. Losing badly with only 38.3 percent of the vote, it would have restored tougher penalties for drug and property crimes. Backed to the tune of $3.0 million by law enforcement unions, supporters for Prop. 20 were outspent overall, although not by much. Leading the charge against Prop. 20 was $2.3 million from Zuckerberg’s PAC, and $2.0 million from Patty Quillin, whose husband Reed Hastings is the founder of Netflix. This power couple is better known for donating $2.2 million to the victorious campaign of George Gascon, the idiot who destroyed San Francisco, and who is now going to reprise his role as district attorney to destroy Los Angeles.

Overall, unions did not do well on ballot propositions in California this election season, despite maintaining their grip on nearly every other manifestation of political power in the state. The real takeaway is the fact that big tech has consolidated its power and is firmly established as the new top dog in California politics. So far, the decisions they’re making are not encouraging. They looked out for their own, in the case of Prop. 22, ostensibly to protect the rights of their drivers to remain independent contractors, while leaving all the rest still victims of AB 5. Mark Zuckerberg, who has enough money to hire a private security force that could probably defeat the armies of small nations, saw fit to take down Prop. 20, apparently indifferent to the ongoing chaos on the streets of every major city in California.

To conclude with the obvious, how unions and tech billionaires decide they want to influence politics from now on is going to be decisive. But apart from the police unions peeling away from the pack to support Prop. 20, there is no sign that the coalition that already broke California – unions, government bureaucrats, extreme environmentalists, litigators, and liberal activists of every stripe – will be anything but more powerful with the arrival of politically active tech billionaires. There are only two political forces that can match this sort of firepower. Other business interests, when confronting an existential threat, as shown by the massive opposition to Prop. 15 and Prop. 23, and populism, as shown by the landslide rejection of Prop. 16.

In most cases, if they chose to, these special interests could pursue an enlightened course of action. The law enforcement unions were right to back Prop. 20, and they should try again. While the tech billionaires haven’t done much of anything right just yet, it would only take one of them to shake the system. Maybe school vouchers will be the disruptive cause that attracts real money from Silicon Valley. And if the environmentalist leadership listened to their members, instead of just talking down to them and addling their minds, we would already be logging responsibly in California’s forests to thin the tinder, instead of encouraging our feckless governor to cope with wildfires by calling for more electric cars.

With only a few exceptions, on the dozen ballot initiatives they faced, California’s voters made the right choices. This is an encouraging development. If only a few more special interests put common sense and the common welfare in front of their blinding ideologies and billion dollar enterprises, the political landscape in this state would swiftly realign.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

 *   *   *

Citizen Initiatives Transform Oxnard Politics

/by

California’s ballot initiative process allows citizen activists to bypass politicians who are controlled by special interests. The ability for citizens today to connect and organize using online resources means it has never been easier for a determined group of individuals, without access to big donors, to nonetheless successfully qualify reform measures for the ballot and put them before voters.

A current example of this is the ongoing RecallGavin2020 campaign. This volunteer organization is already half-way towards collecting enough signatures to force Governor Newsom to defend his position in a special recall election. The 800,000 signed recall petitions collected so far, all by volunteers, is already in record territory. These volunteers have made history.

What can be done statewide can also be done locally. Back in 2019, in Oxnard, a small group of activists, led by Aaron Starr, a local executive with a financial background including a CPA, began working to qualify five reform initiatives. The audacity of their effort to qualify not one, but five reform initiatives was noteworthy at the time, as reported in a California Policy Center article “Citizen Reformers Set to Transform Oxnard’s Politics.”

With the November 2020 election over, what has happened in Oxnard sets an inspiring example for reform activists in every city and county in California. Following through on their plans, Starr’s group, dubbed the “Coalition for Moving Oxnard Forward,” have seriously disrupted business as usual in the City of Oxnard. For each of the five reform measures they proposed, they gathered 8,400 verified signatures (10 percent of the city’s voters), qualifying all of them for the November 2020 ballot. Here is how each of them fared:

The action began back in January of this year, when the Oxnard City Council began to take countermeasures against the five reform measures, all five of which had been qualified by then to be on the November 2020 ballot. The first of these reforms to be targeted was term limits. To cope with this potential threat to the tenure of these elected officials, they gamed the system by quietly adopting the term limits measure as law, removing the need for it to be on the ballot. They then voted to place their own watered down version of term limits onto the earlier March 2020 primary ballot, marketing it as “strict term limits,” in order to fool voters into supporting a measure that would supersede the genuine term limit reforms that they’d adopted as law.

Got that? The replacement measure, diluted but sold to voters as a tough reform, passed easily. It’s now being challenged in court.

These sorts of machinations by California’s elected officials, so many of whom are wholly owned by public sector unions and other special interests, are nothing new. Expect it.

Oxnard residents were able to vote on the remaining four reform measures, but not before the City Council sued to keep three of them off the ballot. In all three cases, the proponents were able to obtain a court order forcing the city to keep them on the ballot.

The only one that the City of Oxnard did not sue to keep off the ballot was the Measure F, dubbed “Permit Simplicity.” The motivation for this reform ought to be obvious to anyone trying to navigate the review process with most local governments in California. As the proponents put it:

“Getting a permit at Oxnard City Hall can be bureaucratic, time-consuming and costly, whether one wants to replace a water heater, remodel a home, build a tenant improvement, or expand a business. The solution is Permit Simplicity – a streamlined, safer process that enables next-day permit issuance – a program built upon a successful model implemented ten years ago in Phoenix, Arizona, the country’s fifth most populous city.”

Despite a hard fought campaign by the city against Measure F, it narrowly passed.

Oxnard civic reform activists may have slightly overreached with Measure L, “Financial Transparency.” Some of the much needed provisions of this measure included requiring city expenditures and monthly financial reports to be posted on the city’s website, along with invoices, purchase orders, submitted bids and solicitations for bids. It also required the city to use an independent auditor to conduct performance audits and to oversee a whistleblower program. The measure even made the city treasurer, an elected official – hence accountable to voters – head of the Oxnard Finance Department.

In the face of city opposition that argued strenuously against this last provision – that the elected treasurer would run the city’s finances – Measure L was defeated. But the reformers weren’t finished.

One of the big difficulties local government watchdogs face is the ability for city councils to hold meetings during the day when most private citizens are themselves working and unable to attend. Another tactic used by city governments to undermine the ability of citizens to effectively critique council actions is to blindside the attendees with new information presented by staff during council meetings.

Oxnard’s Measure M, “Open Meetings,” addresses both of these problems and others. It requires council meetings be held no earlier than 5 p.m. on weekdays. It requires staff presentations be videotaped and posted in advance of meetings. It also extends the time for individual members of the community to comment from one minute to three minutes, and allows them to present videos or PowerPoint slides.

These provisions were designed to reduce the travesty of city staff and councilmembers pushing their agenda through with minimal public awareness or input, something that is all to common in California’s cities and counties. Oxnard’s voters agreed, passing Measure M with an overwhelming majority.

Saving the most creative for last, Measure N, the “Fixing Streets” ballot measure required the city to either bring its streets up to a pavement condition index rating of 80, or be forced to terminate the half-cent sales tax increase adopted in 2008. There was an irony to the city’s opposition to this measure, because when streets are regularly maintained, moisture doesn’t go through cracks in the road surface which causes accelerated deterioration which is much more expensive to repair. But where the city could not see what was in its best interests, voters could, approving Measure N by a close but comfortable margin.

Where there’s an organized offense, there’s the capacity for defense, and opposition from Oxnard’s citizen reformers made the City work hard to pass their own Measure E, yet another new tax. Predictably, the lengthy ballot title for this measure was designed to maximize its appeal to voters. It reads:

“Shall an ordinance establishing 1 and 1/2 cent sales tax to maintain 911 emergency response times, natural disaster, public health/emergency preparedness; prevent fire station closures; address homelessness; attract/retain local businesses/jobs; keep public areas safe/clean; secure Oxnard’s long-term financial stability; maintain general services/infrastructure; requiring annual audits, public disclosure of all spending; providing $40,000,000 annually until ended by voters, used only for Oxnard, be adopted?”

What civic minded voter can refuse that appeal? The measure passed, but at 53.9 percent in favor and 46.1 percent opposed, not by a landslide.

The true motivation for the City of Oxnard to want more taxes ought to be clear by now to anyone remotely familiar with what really drives out-of-control spending by California’s local governments, pay and benefits for public employees. But that’s another story.

What the citizens of Oxnard did, successfully passing three local measures – Permit Simplicity, Open Meetings, and Fixing Streets – will make an immediate difference in how that city is governed and how local officials will now be more responsive to the citizens they serve.

Consider all of the local ballot measures that faced voters in Oxnard’s Ventura County this past November. Nearly everything on that ballot was a new tax or a new bond pushed by local elected officials. Oxnard’s citizen sourced measures stand out as the sole examples of reformers taking the initiative. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

In a state where nearly every city and county is ran by government unions and billionaires, it is still possible to make a difference with ballot initiatives. In Oxnard, they’re thinking big, recognizing that rapid and transformative change requires not one, but multiple initiatives. What they’re doing can and should be replicated by serious reformers everywhere.

Note: Here are links to the complete drafts of the four reform measures put before Oxnard voters on November 3: Measure F, Measure L, Measure M, Measure N. For questions about these reforms, use the Contact Us form on the website of the Coalition for Moving Oxnard Forward. An earlier version of this article appeared on the website California Globe.

 *   *   *

Using Online Resources to Qualify Ballot Measures

/by

There is a mass delusion afflicting millions of Californians. They endure a cost-of-living nearly twice the national average, high taxes, the highest incidence of poverty, the most hostile business climate, some of the worst K-12 schools, well over a $1.0 trillion in bond and pension debt, unaffordable homes, among the highest prices in the nation for gasoline and electricity, water rationing, and they drive on congested and decaying roads and freeways.

Yet the latest PPIC poll, released this month, finds 49 percent of likely voters approve of Governor Newsom’s job performance, and 47 percent approve of the state legislature.

Meanwhile, on the streets and in the parks of every major California city, over 150,000 homeless people are permanently encamped. Literally tens of thousands of them are either insane, diseased, drug addicts, criminals, or all of the above. As working Californians attempt to keep their shops open, or walk to work, or live in peace, these homeless, who need help, not “lifestyle tolerance,” defecate, shoot heroin, and shriek in terror of schizophrenic demons. But instead of declaring an emergency, Governor Newsom just throws additional billions at what is a well documented scam, where politically favored cronies build “supportive housing” at average costs of over $500,000 per unit.

Yet this same poll finds that “fifty-eight percent of Californians are optimistic that the governor and legislature will be able to work together and accomplish a lot in the next year.”

This is mass delusion. Because as long as a clique of leftist oligarch cronies and public sector union bosses control everything that happens in California, they will enrich themselves, and none of these problems – homeless, housing prices, cost-of-living, high taxes, etc. – will ever get solved. Eventually, Californians will realize that Newsom and his entire gang’s supposed solutions are scams, and their incessant virtue signaling on issues of social equity and “climate change” are diversionary cons.

California’s Red Pill Moment is Coming

In the movie Matrix there is a scene where the main character is offered a choice: He can take a blue pill and continue to live in a dream world, or he can take the red pill and confront harsh reality. As rebel leader Morpheus warns, “all I can offer you is the truth.”

The truth is this: California is a feudal state masquerading as a democracy. A supermajority of voters are either ultra-wealthy, or they are the well heeled professional class that serves them, or they are public employees whose pay and benefit packages exempt them from the laws and the costs they impose on everyone else, or they are low income residents who’ve been bought off – some by state funded benefits, others by socialist rhetoric. But it can’t go on.

It will only take a few influential Californians to take the red pill, and accurately view the harsh reality of life for most Californians, and a preference cascade will ensue. By the millions, Californians will suddenly realize that their supposed saviors are actually the exploiters. They will see social justice excess and environmentalist extremism for what it is, cover for the corporations and the bureaucrats to consolidate their power over every aspect of economic life, making it almost impossible for working people to live here.

Overnight, California will transition from having not millions, but tens of millions of engaged, politically disenfranchised residents who want to do something, anything, to save their state. And there is something they can do. They can file state ballot initiatives.

Building An Open Source Ballot Initiative Capacity

The one way Californians can bypass their legislature is via the initiative process, even though that process has been undermined by lawmakers. Recent legislation requires signature gatherers to be paid employees instead of independent contractors, greatly raising costs and liabilities. The minimum one can expect to pay to place an initiative on the California state ballot is $5 million. What if that cost could be reduced by 80 percent?

What if a comprehensive online resource for any state ballot initiative campaign could be developed, posted as open source, and made available to California’s beleaguered serfs? Who cares if the aristocrats also get their hands on it? They don’t need it. They already have all the money in the world, and they already do whatever they want. It doesn’t help them. But for the serfs, direct Democracy restores the balance of power.

With access to lists from well established, supportive grassroots organizations, along with viral endorsements from celebrities and influencers, activist Californians could be driven to a set of online resources that would comprise a one-stop shop for volunteer sustained ballot initiatives, from concept to polling to signature gathering. Those who shared their lists could have input into what initiatives would be promoted. But that would just prime the pump. The project would acquire its own momentum and attract followers who immediately recognize its breakthrough potential. These resources would include:

1 – Central online dashboard – a website that explains the project along with how the initiative process works, and provides links to all areas.
2 – YouTube instructional videos explaining each step in the process (for example, petition downloading and petition verification).
3 – A “polling” module (and report generator) where registrants vote on various initiative concepts.
4 – A status report module showing where various initiative concepts are in the pipeline.
5 – Downloadable petitions that can be printed and signed.
6 – Signature verification module to be utilized by volunteers (with professional assistance) in each county.

The technology for all of this exists. It is an idea whose time has come. In most cases utilizing off-the-shelf plugins (along with gaining access to the current California voter file from the Secretary of State), this entire online resource can easily be built. If it were built as open source and shared, multiple populist insurgencies could operate simultaneously.

Leveraging online technology and volunteers to greatly reduce dependence on paid signature gatherers has already been done by San Diego based Reform California. They successfully put a gas tax repeal measure, Proposition 6, onto the state ballot in November 2018. Although the initiative was defeated, the innovations implemented by Reform California dramatically reduced the cost to qualify their measure for the ballot, and paved the way for future efforts.

There are several populist reforms that would appeal to Californians of all political sentiments and across all backgrounds of income, ethnicity and gender. In education, union work rule reforms, more charter schools and school vouchers would all have broad appeal. In other areas, for example, spending more on water and transportation infrastructure, repealing crippling environmental edicts, reforming the disastrous downgrades of property and drug crimes, changing policies governing treatment of the homeless, and requiring pension fund investment in infrastructure revenue bonds would all have broad appeal. Californians want these reforms, but the legislators won’t do any of it.

This could be a game changer. A slate of activist generated state ballot initiatives with broad populist appeal could offer candidates a platform, it could offer opportunities to educate the electorate on alternatives to the one-party rule, and it gives activists something tangible to work on. Initiatives successfully placed onto the ballot will drain tens, if not hundreds of millions of opposition dollars out of the coffers of the aristocracy, and some of them will still win, transforming the political landscape of California.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

 *   *   *

Local and State Initiatives – The Future of Policy in California?

/by

Grassroots activists in California point to the initiative process as a potent and underutilized last resort, capable of ushering in sweeping reforms. They’re right, but the initiative process is equally available to California’s progressives, backed by powerful special interests. And while the activist reformers talk, the progressives act.

How else to explain the hundreds of local ballot initiatives that are marketed to voters in California’s cities and counties every time there’s an election, which in aggregate soak taxpayers for billions in new taxes every year? In November 2016, out of 224 local tax proposals, voters approved over 70 percent, adding $2.9 billion in new taxes. In November 2018, out of 259 local tax measures, voters approved another estimated $1.6 billion per year in new taxes.

The vast majority of these tax measures are sponsored by special interests who stand to gain from their passage. In fact, many if not most local tax measures are supported by elected officials representing city and county governments, and they utilize the resources of their agencies to promote these measures. As California Policy Center President Will Swaim wrote in 2016, “Despite multiple legal decisions limiting the practice, municipal officials in California may be paying outside consultants to run the campaign to sell you on your local tax measure.”

The way public agencies get away with this is under the guise of “educating” the voters about the impact of new taxes. “Education,” of course, is a word with a broad range of defensible meanings, so when you get that flyer with a photo of terrified seniors or vulnerable children, along with “information” on how higher taxes will prevent such tragedies, know that your tax dollars are at work educating you to vote yes on more taxes.

Even if the “multiple legal decisions limiting the practice” of local government agencies campaigning for higher taxes in the name of educating the public were enforced, forces aligned with government would still represent an overwhelming political advantage. Whether they’re crony capitalists, bond issuers, or government unions, they want those taxes flowing straight back to them in the form of contract awards, underwriting fees, and higher pay and benefits.

To campaign for higher taxes, these special interests spend millions, and never quit. In terms of resources they can muster against their opposition, they are akin to the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars movies. Facing this Empire – these major corporations, these massive financial institutions, and the public sector unions – is a rag tag army of rebel activists, grotesquely outgunned.

That’s reality. But reality can change.

Open Source Initiative Logistics for the 21st Century

Critics of making online resources for initiative advocates readily available and replicable fear that reformers will be swamped by progressives making even broader use of these resources. The problem with that logic is that the progressives – and their powerful corporate, nonprofit, and government allies – don’t need these resources. They have more than enough money to put whatever they want onto local and state ballots, whenever they want, and they do.

At the state level, a citizens initiative backed by public employee unions threatens to undermine Prop. 13. At the local level, as noted, in every election there are hundreds of ballot proposals for new taxes and bonds. The danger is not that the Empire will steal the innovations of the rebels, because they’re already able to launch as many initiatives as they think voters can handle. They’re also able to fight the impact of initiatives in the courts, as proven by their success in undermining San Diego and San Jose’s pension reform initiatives, both of which were overwhelmingly supported by voters.

While the rebels dither over strategy, the Empire expands into new territory. In San Diego County, a local citizens initiative aims to require a public vote to approve or disapprove large housing developments in unincorporated areas. This will go before voters in March 2020, and expect more of these sorts of initiatives in front of voters in the future, along with other Empire compliant “progressive” measures such as rent control, forced high density zoning, and new regulations to enforce urban containment. Never mind that the effect of these measures are to keep the real estate portfolios of the wealthy soaring and render basic housing unaffordable to low and middle income working Californians.

The true challenge facing reform minded rebels is how to lower the cost of launching state and local ballot initiatives to compete with the progressive Empire. One innovator who has paved the way is Carl DeMaio’s Reform California project based in San Diego. Replicating this work across California would go a long way towards making reform initiatives not only a potent last resort, but a viable and affordable last resort. Some of the features pioneered by DeMaio include:

  • Offering officially sanctioned initiative petitions online that are downloadable and printable.
  • Preparing all initiative campaign materials on inexpensive websites.
  • Using a massive database of text numbers and emails to inexpensively solicit volunteers and petition signers.
  • Producing YouTube videos that provide clear and precise instructions to petition signers and signature gathering volunteers, as well as to volunteers who verify signatures.
  • Mobilizing volunteer activists, and carefully training them to perform verification of signed petitions.
  • Coordinating, nearly all of it through online communications, volunteer networks in every California county, in order to submit signed petitions in absolute compliance with all laws governing the process.
  • Utilizing professional signature gathering firms in a nonexclusive, consultative capacity.

There is no reason why these innovations cannot be adopted by citizen groups across California. And there is no reason why the organizations in the vanguard of adopting these innovations cannot share their templates with like-minded organizations throughout the state.

While a successful ballot initiative requires legal research and online expertise, the vastly greater cost is the fees charged by professional signature gathering firms. Using these firms to supplement volunteer signature gathering, instead of the other way around, turns the tables, and is a financial game changer.

Examples of Local Ballot Initiatives

Along with the San Jose pension reform initiative, and the San Diego pension reform initiative, there have been ongoing local ballot initiatives sponsored by TeaPAC, a volunteer organization based in Pasadena led by the tax fighter Mike Alexander. In recent years TeaPAC has placed three initiatives before voters offering them the opportunity to repeal their local utility taxes, in Sierra Madre, Glendale, and Arcadia.

An innovation that might constitute a mortal threat to the Galactic Empire, were it to proliferate to hundreds of cities and counties in California, is being pioneered by a small group of volunteers in Oxnard. Led by Aaron Starr, a local executive with a financial background including a CPA, this group aims to put not one, but five initiatives onto the local 2020 ballot.

The cost to qualify one local reform initiative, vs. the cost to qualify five local reform initiatives, is not linear. Typically when a signature gatherer succeeds in getting a registered voter to sign one ballot petition, they’ll be willing to sign the rest of them. And when campaigning for reform initiatives, there might be a benefit to having a slate of initiatives. Voters might find it motivating to know that they have a chance to support a coherent package of several mutually reinforcing reforms that offer the potential for dramatic improvements to their local governance.

As summarized in this article in the Ventura County Star on May 4, 2019, the ballot measures that Starr and his colleagues are circulating for signatures are:

Oxnard Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act, which would make the city treasurer, an elected official, the head of the finance department.

Keeping the Promise for Oxnard Streets Act, which would deny the city certain sales tax revenue if it fails to maintain streets to specific levels.

Oxnard Term Limits Act, which would limit the mayor and council members to no more than two consecutive four-year terms.

Oxnard Open Meetings Act, which would require city meetings to begin no earlier than 5 p.m. and allow public speakers no less than three minutes to comment.

Oxnard Permit Simplicity Act, which would reform the permitting system with training, new guidelines and an auditing process that would lead an applicant to obtain a permit in one business day.

Clearly if all of these are passed by voters, they will have a comprehensive impact. Imagine the impact of dozens, or hundreds of groups of local activists, applying this same strategy of filing multiple initiatives, in jurisdictions throughout California.

How to File Local Ballot Initiatives

Whether you decide as a local elected official to embrace an independent citizens initiative, or launch one yourself, here’s how to get it done:

BACKGROUND

California Elections Code
Division 9: Measures Submitted to Voters, Chapter 3: Municipal Elections
Article 1: Initiative, Sections 9200 – 9226
https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/elections-code/elec-sect-9200.html

TIMELINE

Note: It is imperative to seek expert legal advice to verify the details of each step in this process.

1 – Draft ballot measure.

2 – Submit notice of intent to circulate for signatures and wording of measure to City Attorney for Title & Summary and approval to circulate for signatures (15 business days – this may vary).

3 – Have a petition for signatures created which meets all state legal requirements.

4 – Check city’s election code to see if there are any additional requirements or restrictions on petitions for local measures.

5 – Publish legal ad within 10 days (this may vary) of receiving Title and Summary which includes notice of intent and wording of measure in a newspaper adjudicated in the city.

6 – Begin gathering signatures either the same day or one day after receiving Title and Summary.

7 – Once the city attorney grants Title & Summary, the council may conduct a fiscal impact report and present the findings at an upcoming council meeting. Typically, the council is by law prohibited from taking a position on the measure.

8 – Proponents have 180 days (this may vary) starting the day after receiving Title & Summary to gather and submit required valid signatures.

9 – For a local tax repeal, the number of valid signatures required is 5% of the number of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election in that city. It is advisable to get 30-50% additional signatures since the registrar throws out so many signatures as invalid. The closer you can get to 50% the better, but anything less than an additional 30% is very risky.

10 – The city has 30 business days (this may vary) to then verify the signatures.

11 – If the signatures fail to qualify the measure, the city notifies the proponents and returns the petitions for them to check the validation results.

12 – Proponents have a very short period of time where they can challenge any of the signature results.

13 – If the signatures qualify the measure, the city notifies the proponents and schedules the measure as an agenda item for the next city council meeting.

14 – At the next city council meeting the council has the option to either enact the measure immediately, or schedule the measure for an upcoming election.

Ballot Initiatives Are California’s Best Hope

At the state and local level, it is clear that ballot initiatives are already a weapon of the corporate/progressive alliance that constitutes a real world version of the oppressive Galactic Empire in the Star Wars movies. But the rebel alliance can and must also wield this weapon.

Using modern online resources and networking activist groups across the state can save millions, even tens of millions, that would otherwise have to be solicited from donors and spent with signature gathering firms. Instead these firms can still be hired, but in nonexclusive consultative roles. And if enough bands of activists launch local ballot initiative projects all over California, these firms will still get plenty of work!

Along with the necessity to launch orders of magnitude more rebel sponsored local initiatives is the opportunity to launch multiple, linked initiatives in each locale, using Oxnard as the example. Doing this would introduce economies of scale both in the signature gathering phase as well as in the campaign phase, since these initiatives can be presented as a unified set of reforms that in aggregate will result in an immediate and transformative impact on local politics.

At the state level the potential also exists for a slate of linked initiatives, also co-marketed for signature gathering as well as during the campaign phase. These initiatives could offer transformative, constitutional changes affecting California’s policies in the areas of housing, the homeless, law and order, energy, infrastructure, education and pensions. They could be conceived in a manner to offer populist appeal to a broad constituency incorporating all ethnicities and income groups.

These slates of multiple initiatives, both at the state and local level, not only offer voters the chance to transform their communities in one election, they also offer politicians a political platform they can endorse both to support the initiatives and also to define their own candidacies.

California’s ruling class, those imperial aristocrats, have pushed the ordinary people of California to the limit. In virtually every area that matters, public education, housing, homeless, roads, utility costs, hostility to business, punitive fees to build homes or open businesses, ridiculously high taxes – California’s ruling class has taken from the working poor and given to the rich. They may wield absolute power today. But that can change overnight.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

 *   *   *