California
The future of an 80-acre parcel eyed for Mendocino County’s largest commercial development was in limbo Wednesday after voters overwhelmingly defeated a ballot measure that would have allowed developers to bypass the local planning process.
Supporters of California’s states parks are pushing for an initiative to be put in the state ballot in 2010 that, if approved, would charge an $18 annual fee on most vehicle registrations, reported the Union-Tribune. The money from the registration fee would go straight to state parks. Motorists would then be allowed to have unlimited parking at state parks and beaches. Currently, it costs between $10 to $15 to park your car at a state beach or park. The fee would raise around $500 million a year—enough to offset current parking fees.
John Marcotte, a married father of two who voted against last year`s Prop 8, might seem an unusual proponent for a bill designed to further “protect traditional marriage” until he explains how he plans to do it: by outlawing divorce in the state of California.
Backers may start collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would require public schools to offer a chance for students to listen to Christmas music, the state says. The initiative, if it makes it to the ballot and is passed by voters, would tell schools to notify students’ parents or guardians 21 days before the music will be played or performed so that students can opt out of listening to or performing the music, Secretary of State Debra Bowen said in a prepared statement.
There’s a good commentary from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association that came out a couple days ago regarding the initiative process and California. It highlights some of the recent attacks on the taxpayers and their ability to use the initiative process in the state.
As disgust with the California Legislature continues to grow to record levels, a ballot initiative entered circulation this week to revert state legislators back to part-time status. ”California’s experiment with a ‘full-time’ Legislature has failed,” the initiative’s proponent, Citizens for California Reform CEO Gabriella Holt, wrote in her filings. “The result has been a Legislature dominated by career politicians beholden to special interests.”
This week, two California initiatives entered circulation that would potentially affect how elections and legislative government would work in California’s future. One provides that the voters themselves, by initiative petition, could call a state Constitutional Convention. The other provides for a part-time legislature. Each needs 694,354 valid signatures, since they each are themselves proposed constitutional amendments.
Joe Matthews from the New America Foundation offers his Cliff’s Notes on California Constitutional Convention Initiatives at the Blockbuster Democracy Blog.
Safety versus personal freedom, tradition as opposed to increasing concerns about fire. Those are some of the issues cited by those for, and against, Measure C, appearing on the ballot for this November’s election in Lakeport. Measure C would restore the ability for several local nonprofit groups to sell fireworks within Lakeport’s city limits from July 1 through July 4 of each year.
“The Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court recently declared the state’s government “dysfunctional.”
But Judge Ronald George didn’t bother to tell this to his employers, the people of California. Instead, the judge delivered his speech all the way across the continent, in Massachusetts, at his induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.”
Read the rest of Paul Jacob’s most recent Common Sense column here.
Like many cities before it, Pomona has placed a measure on the Nov. 3 ballot that if approved would update the city’s utility users tax. Measure PC, the city’s Telecommunications Utility Users Tax initiative, focuses on modernizing language in the telecommunications portion of the utility tax ordinance. “Our belief is the nature of this legislation is to maintain what we have,” City Manager Linda Lowry told a group of residents who gathered at the Willie White Park Community Center recently.
A ballot fight looms over limiting the use of government workers’ union dues for political purposes, a life-or-death issue for organized labor. Two similar initiatives have been rejected in the recent past, including the 1998 battle over “paycheck protection” that ultimately played a significant role in the election of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis.
Real estate investor David Addington, 42, walks down the part of Market Street that intersects San Francisco’s Skid Row, motioning at run-down century-old buildings and describing his plan to lead an economic renaissance. “Take a look down the sidewalk. You see all the people?” he says, in reference to a mob of pedestrians in front of Nordstrom on the northwest side of Fifth and Market streets. “Now look at this side. There’s nobody.”
A Templeton ballot initiative to create a benefit assessment district to fund a full-time fire department failed. Sixty-one percent of Templeton property owners voted against the additional tax. The Templeton Fire Department now relies on 24 volunteer members for emergency response.
State Sen. George Runner has sued Attorney General Jerry Brown to force California’s top cop to rewrite the summary on a ballot measure that would require people to show a picture ID before they could vote. Runner, a Republican from Lancaster, charges in the lawsuit filed Oct. 14 in Sacramento Superior Court that the Democratic attorney general tried to “mislead the public” with a slanted ballot measure.