San Jose Mercury News
In an urgent attempt to maintain universal health coverage for children in Santa Clara County, community leaders are organizing a campaign to rescue one of the region’s landmark programs for working poor families. Their goal is to win broad support for a November ballot measure that would pump $13.5 million per year into the Healthy Kids program through a $29-a-year parcel tax on county property owners. County leaders recognize the challenge: Asking voters in a down economy to assist other families who can’t afford insurance for their children.
Four days after turning in paperwork for an initiative that would have increased San Carlos police staffing and salaries — in addition to requiring voter approval for the city to contract for police services — the city’s police union submitted a revised proposal and admitted the original was a mistake. The revised proposal turned in Monday by the Police Officers Association keeps a section in the original that would prohibit the city from outsourcing police services without prior voter approval and reinstate the department if it is outsourced before the measure’s passage.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging voters to back an initiative on Tuesday’s ballot that would scrap the primary system for state and congressional elections. After casting his own ballot in a Los Angeles elementary school, Schwarzenegger said voters could help end partisan stalemates in the California Legislature by supporting Proposition 14. The so-called open ballot initiative allows voters to cast ballots for any candidate regardless of party affiliation, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the general election.
Menlo Park voters will get a chance this fall to take some control over the escalating costs of public employee pension benefits when they go to the polls. The city council gave them that power when it unanimously voted early Wednesday morning to send an initiative to the November ballot that would reduce pension benefits for new city employees.
Ever since the near-collapse of California’s finances last year, angry voters have threatened to bolt for the ballot box and do something they’re convinced lawmakers can’t: make drastic changes to a state that’s fundamentally broken. And indeed, Californians will face a crop of propositions in the voting booth this June, all of them promising change. But don’t expect dramatics like a constitutional convention.
A plan to charge California motorists $18 a year to shore up the state parks system’s financial troubles took another step toward the November ballot on Monday when environmental groups submitted about 760,000 signatures to the state. Under state law, the campaign needs 433,931 valid signatures of registered California voters to qualify the initiative. Elections officials have until June 24 to certify the measure.
California lawmakers on Monday endorsed raising the fee to file a ballot initiative, despite concerns that doing so would limit the ability of individuals to put their ideas before voters. The state Assembly voted mostly along partisan lines, 43-22, to raise the filing fee over a six-year period from $200 to $2,000. If the legislation becomes law, it will be the first time the fee is raised since it was imposed in 1943.
A San Mateo County judge tentatively ruled Thursday that an electronic signature submitted to the county elections office cannot be used to qualify an initiative for the ballot. In his written decision released prior to a court hearing Thursday, Superior Court Judge George Miram ruled against Michael Ni, whose lawsuit sought to force the county clerk to accept a USB drive containing an “e-signature” that he submitted to qualify a statewide ballot measure for legalizing and taxing marijuana.
A backlash against efforts in California and Congress to rein in greenhouse gas emissions is brewing in hard economic times. A coalition of businesses — including two Bay Area oil refiners — and an anti-tax group has begun a signature drive for a November ballot initiative that would suspend California’s pioneering law to combat global warming until the jobless rate drops back to 2006 levels. Supporters of California’s law, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, say the initiative would cripple the state’s emerging clean energy industry.
Transportation agencies in Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and other Bay Area counties are considering seeking voter approval to increase auto registration fees by $10 a year to fix potholes, improve transit and fight congestion. Officials believe that the public is so fed up with poor road conditions and bus and rail cuts because of reduced state funding that they may agree to higher fees in economic hard times. A simple majority approval is needed for individual counties to raise the registration fee. Most measures would be on the November ballot.