| | | | |  | | By Emily Schultheis and Will McCarthy | |  Those hoping to reach a deal on ballot measures this month will have to push through alternative legislation for Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign. | Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo | CRUNCH TIME FOR DEALMAKING — June is traditionally a frenzied time for those hoping to find deals to scrap voter initiatives from the November ballot, but this month could feel tighter than usual. There are only three and a half weeks left before the June 27 deadline to get through a hefty to-do list: Hammer out the details of a deal to drop a ballot initiative; draft and pass alternative legislation; get Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign that; and have the measure’s proponents formally ask the Secretary of State’s office to remove it. The negotiations themselves, on everything from worker lawsuits and personal finance education to retail theft and taxation, require not only political will but an immense amount of legwork. This year’s ballot is unusually fluid — many of the 11 qualified and likely-to-qualify measures could be ripe for a deal — and talks to remove specific measures will be competing for lawmakers’ and the governor’s attention with a high-stakes budget deal as well as ongoing bond negotiations. As a result, the next 24 days will be full of murky rumors and posturing, making it tough for outsiders to get an accurate read on who’s actually talking to whom and whether (and when) they’ll reach an agreement. For more on this year’s process — including how one lobbyist made a negotiations bingo game to keep interest and industry groups at the table — read Emily’s full story out today. NEWS BREAK — UC employees’ strike expands to three more campuses … Vince Fong will be sworn in as Kevin McCarthy’s successor in the House … the Corral fire is now 75 percent contained after burning 14,000 acres. 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. PUBLIC HOUSING: State Sen. Ben Allen pulled his constitutional amendment on public housing projects, citing recent progress in the Legislature on the issue and his desire to avoid an expensive campaign. What will be the next measure to come off the ballot? 2. CLIMATE BOND: Climate-bond backers are considering draft versions of the measure, with price tags ranging from $6 billion to $10 billion. But as efforts intensify to pass it and two other bonds, they’ll all be facing electoral headwinds from newly tightfisted voters. 3. MCO TAX: Set to qualify this week, the initiative to prevent governors from using a tax on some health plans to balance the budget looks ripe for deal-making. In his most recent budget proposal, Newsom suggested sweeping revenue from the managed care organization tax into the general fund, but was rebuffed by legislative leaders. If the Legislature agrees the money should go to fund Medi-Cal, as intended, it’s possible lawmakers and the governor could reach a compromise on how the tax money is allocated without going to the ballot. 4. PROP 47 OVERHAUL: Local officials from both parties are flocking to endorse the ballot measure that would undo a decade-old criminal-justice law, including Milpitas’ Democratic Mayor Carmen Montano and Stockton’s Republican Mayor Kevin Lincoln. But top statewide Democrats are looking to bargain on an issue already dividing their coalition. 5. OIL WELLS REFERENDUM: The group campaigning to keep a 2022 law to restrict new oil drilling released a poll showing 67 percent of voters support the setbacks, putting new pressure on the California Independent Petroleum Association to pull its measure challenging the law. 6. SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: Equality California and other LGBTQ+ groups learned they won’t have to play defense this year when an initiative related to trans youth failed to qualify. Now, they’re going all-in on a push to remove dormant Prop 8 language banning same-sex marriage from the state constitution. 7. PAGA REFORM: Business and labor groups have spent weeks negotiating a potential deal on the future of the 2004 Private Attorneys General Act, which allows wronged workers to sue employers on behalf of the state and their colleagues. Business groups helped qualify a ballot measure to repeal the law, but have signaled their openness to changing the law via the Legislature instead: They’re out with new data today showing 72 percent of voters surveyed back the idea of a legislative fix to the issue.
| | | DOWN BALLOT | | WHATEVER HAPPENED TO … PROP 24 (2020) — Four years ago, Californians voted to expand the state’s privacy laws to give consumers more control over their data. Today, a provision of Prop 24 is driving debate within a policy area few were actively working on in 2020: how to regulate AI. Prop 24 tasked the California Privacy Protection Agency with developing regulations for automated decision-making technology, which involves algorithms that can power consequential decisions on topics like loan applications and prisoner parole. Key among those regulations is consumers’ right to request “meaningful information” about the logic involved in those automated decisions — and their right to opt out of them. Regulating AI wasn’t top of mind in politics four years ago, but it’s increasingly being used in all sorts of everyday tasks. California lawmakers are currently considering dozens of bills to rein in the rapidly evolving technology. There’s still a lot to be sorted out before the regulations go into effect: CPPA is working through the tricky semantics, including how to define “automated decision-making” and when an algorithm’s decisions become “significant” enough to merit additional scrutiny. But Alastair Mactaggart, a Bay Area real estate developer who spearheaded Prop 24 and heads the group Californians for Consumer Privacy, told POLITICO his ballot measure is prompting the right kinds of conversations as the influence of AI grows: “California, as it does so often, started a movement,” he said. “I think this is a rare event where we as society shut the barn door before the horse has fully left.” ON OTHER BALLOTS — Abortion rights activists in Nevada submitted nearly twice the number of signatures needed to launch a November ballot initiative that would enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution … Arizona’s Republican-led state Senate advanced a ballot measure that would allow local police to arrest people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, an effort to circumvent a veto from the state’s Democratic governor … A measure on Tuesday’s South Dakota primary ballot could make it the first state to impose an upper age limit on U.S. Senate and House candidates, if successful … The state Supreme Court in Michigan on Friday swatted down an effort to place a measure introducing a $15 minimum wage on the state’s ballot this fall … Missouri election officials certified a ballot measure to ban the use of ranked-choice voting, one of a handful of states to put the practice on the ballot (either approving or banning it) in November.
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| … SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — A ballot initiative to tax empty homes has divided this mountain resort town in recent weeks as both “for” and “against" campaigns shift into gear. The measure would create a tax of up to $6,000 on homes left vacant for more than six months a year, which supporters argue is necessary to shore up the rapidly dwindling rental housing stock for local workers in tourism-related jobs. The row within the lakeside destination near the Nevada border reflects the larger debate across California around how to offer affordable housing, and whose needs to prioritize within popular vacation spots. Amelia Richmond, one of the leaders of the South Lake Tahoe Vacancy Tax group that qualified the initiative, said her experience living on the north side of the lake illustrated just how bad the problem has become. As more second homes have been left unoccupied, Richmond said many of her friends couldn’t find units to rent. Richmond fears locals will increasingly be forced to commute long distances to their jobs, adding to traffic and congestion, and that schools in the area will see declining enrollment and budget cuts. As Richmond put it, “you can't have a community with half of homes sitting empty.” The Tahoe Chamber of Commerce and realtors have locked arms to push back against the initiative, calling it a form of taxation without representation for homeowners who live elsewhere. Steve Teshara, co-chair of the group Stop the Tahoe Vacancy Tax, said: “There’s nothing in the measure itself that earmarks one penny to affordable housing.” That debate has become increasingly tense in recent weeks. Last Thursday, the tax measure’s supporters were set to host a launch party at a local American Legion. But the legion said it began receiving angry calls from residents and at least one legion member, who said hosting the event would be viewed as an endorsement. Ultimately, the legion pulled the plug. “Given the high volatility of this, we decided it would be in our best interest not to host it,” said legion head Tom Millham. | | BLAST FROM THE PAST | | This year, the title Proposition 47 is in the headlines, referring to the landmark 2014 criminal justice measure that prosecutors and retailers are now hoping to amend through a new ballot measure. In the past, the same number was used for votes on banning state elections on alcohol prohibition for eight years (1914, failed) ... Amending the constitution to send vehicle license fees to cities and counties (1986, passed) ... Issuing $13 billion in bonds to renovate public schools (2002, passed).
| | THE Q&A | | WITH DAVID MCCUAN — Sen. Marco Rubio has reintroduced a bill to curb foreign money in ballot initiatives nationwide. POLITICO spoke to David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University who studies ballot measures, about its timing and potential impact. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. Foreign money is already banned in California. How big of a concern is it in the ballot measure realm nationally? It's about the potential, not necessarily the reality. The initiative wars are the wild, wild west of campaign spending. Another way of thinking about it is, dark money has been associated with ballot measures and issue campaigns far longer than Citizens United [the landmark 2010 Supreme Court decision lifting some campaign finance restrictions]. Really smart people recognize that issues persist even if the candidates might change. There is a potential for abuse and the avenue to do that is on the non-candidate side. What’s the nightmare scenario here? This money is dark, that’s the problem. It resides at a P.O. box in Arizona for an entity incorporated in Delaware or Nevada. It's really hard to track the architecture. These are entities that can wage war up and down the ballot box throughout the country — we’re talking potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Where that matters is what's called the spillover effect. These measures draw people out, and that turnout can ultimately affect races on a congressional level. If this is more of a potential threat rather than a current one, why do you think this bill was reintroduced now? In Florida, Republicans have the legislature, so the Democrats use the ballot initiative process to get things through. In California, it’s the opposite. Ballot measures in Florida, what I call the parallel legislature of direct democracy, has been growing in influence about things like abortion, guns. So if the legislature is passing things and you want to blunt that, you have to slow down this parallel legislature. One way to do that is to raise the big bad boogie man of the specter of foreign interference as a potential disruptor. It’s part of a broader attack on elections and electoral processes as legitimate.
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