San Francisco Chronicle
Advocates of legalizing marijuana say they’ve collected more than enough signatures to have California voters decide next year whether to tax and regulate the drug. The signatures in support of the Tax and Regulate Initiative, which would give local governments the authority to tax and regulate the sale of marijuana, will be submitted to state election officials early next year for verification.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, after months of budget battles with the Legislature, met Wednesday with a reform group calling for a part-time state Legislature in a sign of his interest in efforts to reshape Sacramento’s political landscape. The governor sat down for the first time with Gabriella Holt, who heads Citizens for California Reform, a nonpartisan public interest group that describes itself as “committed to advancing more limited and more transparent government.”
San Francisco supervisors on Tuesday yanked a $368 million streets bond that would have gone before voters in November after poll numbers reportedly showed little support for the measure. The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday also tabled a tax measure that was headed for the November ballot. The proposed increase to the vehicle license fee, as well as the streets bond measure, could still appear on a ballot in 2010, said Board of Supervisors President David Chiu.
Oakland voters overwhelmingly approved four ballot measures in an unusual mail-only election Tuesday that sought to ease the city’s tight budget situation. All four measures passed with at least 71 percent of the vote, with well over 90 percent of the ballots counted. Measure F’s creation of a business license tax for cannabis businesses got approval from 79.9 percent of voters, the highest of any measure.
Nearly nine months after California voters banned same-sex marriage in the state, gay marriage supporters are ready to ask them to overturn Proposition 8. They’re just not sure when to ask: In November 2010 or November 2012. Choosing a date involves more than sifting through the polling, community meetings and consultants’ reports that have filled the time since last fall’s election with soul-searching and finger-pointing among supporters, culminating in a meeting of the movement’s leaders Saturday in San Bernardino.
By now, any Californian who has not been hounded to sign a petition for a ballot initiative must never go grocery shopping or strolling along a downtown street. The paid signature gatherers are abundant, they are aggressive and sometimes they are deceptive in their pitches. Most of them have an incentive to be pushy and not quite forthright: They are being paid by the signature.
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According to League of Women Voters member and all around political gadfly Jon Spangler, the City is considering placing a competing measure on the November ballot to go head to head with the Firefighter ballot initiative. The Firefighter led initiative would change the City Charter to mandate a minimum level of staffing for the department that would require the City to fund that department at the minimum level designated by the initiative.
Tuesday’s special election isn’t only about the ballot measures aimed at bailing the state out of its financial troubles and annual budget battles. Two Bay Area cities and one school district are also begging voters for help in separate tax measures.
Children of illegal immigrants would no longer be granted automatic citizenship under a proposed California ballot measure.
The developer of a project to turn the former Navy Yard at Alameda Point into a housing development has began a petition drive for a measure that would increase the density limit for the area. Current Alameda law prohibits structures larger than a duplex, but developers would like to put in higher density units. A group of local citizens has already formed to oppose the measure.
President Barack Obama spoke in Los Angeles in favor of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s package of ballot measures. The measures are aimed at economic recovery and will be before voters in a May 19 special election.