| | | | |  | | By Emily Schultheis and Will McCarthy | |  The lights of the state Capitol glow into the night in Sacramento, California, on Aug. 31, 2022. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP | DEMS DIVIDED OVER PROP 47 OVERHAUL — With just 10 days left until the deadline to pull measures from November’s ballot, Democrats in the Legislature are increasingly divided on their strategy to bring backers of a tough-on-crime initiative to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, Proposition 47 talks involving Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, retailers and district attorneys continue behind the scenes — and the next few days will indicate whether Democrats’ inoperability clause gambit ultimately pays off or backfires. Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, who chairs the public safety committee, pulled his retail theft bill (AB 1794) during this morning’s Senate Appropriations committee hearing. A few hours later, he withdrew his support from the entire package over the so-called inoperability clauses, which would block the new laws if voters in November approve the initiative to pull back Prop 47’s criminal-justice reforms. “I can’t support the retail theft package, which contains my Retail Theft Accountability bill, AB 1794, with the poison pill non-operative amendments included,” he said. “However, I am still optimistic I will be able to revisit AB 1794 as we continue to work out a solution with stakeholders by the 27th.” McCarty wasn’t the only one to change course today: Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria also announced she was taking her name off a retail theft bill she had originally introduced, AB 1960. Her office said Soria would not back the bill because district attorneys and law enforcement associations in her district have pulled their support. “We need greater accountability in California against repeat offenders who continue to engage in theft and harm our businesses,” she said. “That’s the commitment I made to our community and law enforcement partners and it’s a commitment I won’t break.” The moves come just days after another Democratic lawmaker, Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, pulled her backing from two bills over the inoperability amendments — and as other Democratic senators, including Sens. Anthony Portantino and Henry Stern, declined to comment on whether they’d support the bills with the amendments included. It’s an indication of the tricky politics for those involved: McCarty is running for mayor of Sacramento and has tacked to the center as he faces an ultra-progressive opponent; Soria has a challenging reelection campaign in a swing district in the Central Valley, where the tough-on-crime initiative is popular. Democrats are eager to keep retail theft off the ballot in part to avoid the spillover effects the initiative could have on other races. Of note: some of the language in both lawmakers’ statements — McCarty refers to a “balanced approach” and both he and Soria emphasize the need to focus on repeat offenders — tracks almost exactly with the way the initiative’s backers talk about their proposal. That word choice could mean some Democratic lawmakers are signaling a basis for compromise. The Assembly’s appropriations committee will take up the remaining seven retail theft bills on Wednesday. As things progress on the legislative front, one question behind the scenes is whether Newsom’s team can peel off enough of the initiative’s key supporters — and donors — to get the measure’s backers to pull it. — With help from Tyler Katzenberger and Dustin Gardiner | | | | HAPPENING 6/18 — A TALK ON THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION IN CA: California’s adoption of zero-emission vehicle policies will change the transportation landscape over the next two decades. How will the transition impact current transportation infrastructure and how will lawmakers fund future changes? Join POLITICO on June 18 to hear from lawmakers, industry officials and stakeholders to examine the future of transportation infrastructure, from transit, pedestrian and bike lanes to local streets, roads, highways, bridges and overpasses. REGISTER HERE. | | | | |
NEWS BREAK: Secret Service confirms an agent was robbed at gunpoint during Biden’s California trip … Los Angeles Unified School District considers cell phone ban … Sonoma’s Point fire and southern California’s Post fire lead to smoky skies, evacuations.
Welcome to Ballot Measure Weekly, a special edition of Playbook PM every Monday focused on California’s lively realm of ballot measure campaigns. Drop us a line at eschultheis@politico.com and wmccarthy@politico.com, or find us on X — @emilyrs and @wrmccart.
|  | TOP OF THE TICKET | |
A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures getting our attention this week.
1. CLIMATE BOND: A looming budget deal means crunch time for bonds, as lawmakers face dueling proposals for a $10 billion climate package. They reflect two very different visions for green policy, POLITICO transportation reporter Alex Nieves explains: One leans into environmental justice priorities and the other emphasizes renewable electricity generation. 2. RENT CONTROL: The AIDS Health Foundation is planning to release a new batch of endorsements from top Democratic officials, led by U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Jimmy Gomez and Ro Khanna — evidence of growing momentum for the group’s initiative to permit local rent-control measures. 3. EAST SOLANO PLAN (Solano County): The utopian dream of Bay Area tech investors and venture capitalists moved closer to reality last week when California Forever’s rezoning initiative qualified. Now, as our Will McCarthy reports from Vallejo, one of the most well-funded, highly-staffed local ballot campaigns in American history faces a scrappy resistance of farmers, small-town mayors and recent college graduates. 4. PAGA REPEAL: Business interests and labor groups are feeling good about a compromise over the Private Attorneys General Act that could arrive within days or even hours. 5. OIL WELLS: Any deal to kill a referendum on a 2021 law to restrict oil drilling is likely to ride on shrinking the bill’s 3,200-foot setback radius from schools and homes. Environmentalists continue to make the case that they have the upper hand with voters, aiming to convince Democratic lawmakers there’s no reason to compromise with the oil drillers who qualified the measure. 6. PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS: The Sam Bankman-Fried-funded initiative to tax the wealthy for pandemic research remains on ballots even as its famous backer heads to prison and Covid-era urgency recedes. As our Jeremy B. White writes for POLITICO Magazine, the zombie initiative’s future is controlled by tech-executive-turned-philanthropist Max Henderson, the last surviving heir of SBF’s ambitions to remake politics. 7. PICKLEBALL (Ojai): Our favorite local foray into direct democracy this year is officially headed for the November ballot. The city council in this Ventura County weekend destination decided to send the issue of reopening local pickleball courts to voters, setting up an epic clash between trendy-sport enthusiasts and their noise-sensitive opponents.
| | | DOWN BALLOT | | |
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ... PROP 98 (1988) — The California Legislature voted last week to suspend Proposition 98 for the first time since the Great Recession, bringing a 36-year-old constitutional amendment back to the fore in Sacramento.
The measure, which narrowly passed with support from teachers and school administrators over opposition from then Gov. George Deukmejian, set a minimum annual level for funding public schools and community colleges. Proponents said the amendment was necessary to take education budget decisions out of the hands of politicians, but according to the Legislative Analyst's Office, “barely a year has passed” when the state has not made some alterations to the formula determining how Prop 98 funding is calculated. Twice, in 2004-05 and 2010-11, the legislature took advantage of an “urgency statute” loophole and voted to suspend the amendment for a year. Now lawmakers have done it again, after Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a budget that would have tinkered with the calculation of the minimum funds guaranteed to schools. The suspension comes amid an unexpected drop in state revenues and is part of a deal with K-12 education groups that would defer payments into future years. ON OTHER BALLOTS: Voters in North Dakota approved the first-ever ballot measure putting a maximum age limit on candidates for the U.S. House and Senate … The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that an initiative to eliminate the separate minimum wage for tipped employees and allow employers to create tip pools can appear on November’s ballot … Louisiana’s state legislature referred five constitutional amendments to the ballot — one for November and four for December — which would, among other things, require federal revenues received by the state for energy production to be used for the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund. | | | POSTCARD FROM ... | | | 
| … BERKELEY: Environmental activists are pursuing an initiative to rework a 2019 ban on natural gas in the city, an effort to demonstrate the progressive enclave can still lead the electrification movement after a court decision overturned that landmark law. The earlier law passed by the city council banned gas hookups in new Berkeley buildings and was immediately challenged by the California Restaurant Association on behalf of members who would have to resort to alternative energy sources. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year struck down the measure because it infringed on the federal government’s exclusive right to energy regulation. The activists have responded by pursuing a different approach to building decarbonization by opting for a tax rather than an outright ban, which they believe would survive court challenges. This year’s initiative addresses some of the legal issues the 2019 law faced by allowing building owners to continue using natural gas — as long as they are willing to pay an extra tax. The group chose to pursue an initiative in large part because new taxes enacted through the ballot initiative process require only a simple majority for approval, rather than a two-thirds vote of the city council. “We're threading that legal needle that we were constrained by with this ruling,” said campaign organizer Daniel Tahara. The initiative, which qualified last month for the November ballot, would institute a tax on owners of buildings over 15,000 square feet (there are about 500 in Berkeley) based on the amount of natural gas they use each year, with the revenue earmarked to electrify single family homes and smaller apartment buildings. It would serve as something like a carbon tax, as backers describe it — a way for consumers of natural gas to pay their share of its environmental impacts. Berkeley has sat at the center of a growing movement to electrify buildings and decrease the amount of greenhouse gasses they emit, a long-term state goal. The measure’s backers have yet to scale up the campaign to garner broad community support that can overcome what will likely be an aggressive effort by the restaurant industry to defeat it. (Though the industry has yet to comment on the measure.) Tahara, at least, believes its presence on the ballot serves as proof that Berkeley won’t be cowed by unfavorable court decisions and special interest groups. “Berkeley is still here, and the movement is still here,” Tahara said.
| | BLAST FROM THE PAST | |
The California Supreme Court is weighing the fate of Proposition 22, the 2020 Uber/Lyft/Doordash-backed measure that defined rideshare drivers as contractors rather than employees. In the past, the number has been used to: Offer property tax exemptions for veterans (1911, passed) ... Make importing and selling alcohol a misdemeanor (1918, failed) ... Exempt certain planted trees from a timber tax (1926, passed) … And define marriage as being between a man and a woman (2000, passed).
| | THE Q&A | |
WITH ROB LAPSLEY: Proponents of the Taxpayer Protection Act appeared to have a rough week, with a new poll showing the constitutional amendment — which would make it harder to pass taxes and fees — struggling to win support from even a third of voters. Meanwhile, labor unions made a public effort to win potentially big-dollar backing from Hollywood studios. POLITICO spoke with the measure’s architect, California Business Roundtable president Rob Lapsley, in a conversation edited for length and clarity.
Opponents released a letter about the amendment’s impact on film credits that was widely interpreted as an attempt to push you toward a deal. Is that something you’d be open to? There has been very limited discussion from different parties about the Taxpayer Protection Act. We had a meeting with [Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas] and [Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire] last week — that was just another opportunity for us to educate them on what the TPA does. There has been a lot of misrepresentation and lies coming out from the League of Cities and the unions about what it does. Whether there’s interest from the governor or any other party to have any negotiations around the issues of TPA — honestly that’s a question for them. We do not know what they’re thinking. A poll late last week from the Public Policy Institute of California had support for the TPA at just 32 percent. Do those numbers concern you? And what do you make of the rest of the poll? We were very, very pleased because it’s all good news for us. Their numbers on the questions they asked — especially when you look at the cost of living and the other austerity measures and on bonds — are exactly the same numbers we have been tracking for almost three years now. [On the TPA,] they just asked the title and summary question, which as we know is essentially a corrupt process at the Attorney General’s office for measures they don’t like. Their numbers exactly reflected our numbers: We have always had bad numbers on the title and summary. But when you then explain our measure to the voters, we have always received over 60 percent support. | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
