California lawmakers are winding down their time to debate and pass bills this year, but some citizen advocates are just getting started with their own plans to enact laws through ballot measures.
At least three new ballot measures were filed this week, with their various authors hoping to gather the 546,651 signatures required to place them on the November 2024 ballot.
They come on the tail of three other ballot measures filed last week to restrict gender-affirming care and participation in sports for transgender youth.
In total, 15 potential ballot initiatives are pending at the attorney general’s office. Eight are in a signature-gathering phase, and five – along with two referendums challenging laws that would set better working conditions for fast food employees and limit how close new oil wells can be to homes – are already eligible for next year’s general election ballot.
A warning for fentanyl dealers
Frustrated by a lack of action in the Legislature to increase criminal penalties for dealing fentanyl, a group of parents say they’re taking things into their own hands.
An initiative filed Tuesday with the attorney general’s office is modeled after a bill known as “Alexandra’s Law” which failed in the Legislature earlier this year. It would require convicted drug dealers to receive a written notice advising them that furnishing drugs could result in someone’s death.
“Since they absolutely refuse to do anything to address this, we've had to take it into our hands,” said Matt Capelouto, the primary proponent of the initiative.
A handful of Democratic lawmakers voted down several bills earlier this year that would have increased criminal penalties for selling fentanyl, citing concerns about repeating policies from the “war on drugs” and Black and Brown people being disproportionately incarcerated.
The unsuccessful legislation “Alexandra’s law” was named for Capelouto’s college-age daughter, who died after taking a fentanyl-laced pill in 2019.
“It's not going to be easy,” Capelouto said of gathering more than 500,000 signatures to place the measure on the November 2024 ballot. “But it's a challenge worth taking. We're just losing too many lives to this scourge and something has to be done.”
Restricting environmental review for new housing
California’s high housing costs often rank among voters’ highest concerns. A new ballot measure – filed by a former Fox News host – would attempt to cut red tape to build new housing.
Steve Hilton, a conservative British commentator, said the state’s housing crisis affects Califoranians of all political views.
“This is a nonpartisan issue. The housing crisis affects everybody,” he said in an interview.
State lawmakers in recent years have passed bills to streamline new housing in dilapidated commercial areas and allow single-family homeowners to build small multiplexes without local approval.
But Hilton said those efforts are “just not meeting the scale of the need.” He pointed to a 2018 campaign promise by Gov. Gavin Newsom to build 3.5 million new homes, which have not materialized.
“We're way off target. We need something really big to change,” he said.
His initiative, called the Homeownership Affordability Act, would restrict environmental lawsuits on new housing projects, allowing only district attorneys or the state attorney general to challenge new builds under the California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA.
“There is no change to CEQA under our proposal. It's simply changing the ability of people to use CEQA in an abusive way to stop housing,” Hilton said.
The initiative would cap impact fees charged by local governments, which can drive up the cost to build. A portion of those impact fees would be deposited into a housing fund to “enable construction industry workers to get on the housing ladder themselves if they commit to staying in the industry in California,” Hilton said.
Requiring personal finance classes for teens
A third measure filed this week would make California the 24th state to require a personal finance course for public school high school students to graduate.
“Personal finance skills like budgeting, building and managing credit, and understanding options to finance career or college education are absolutely essential in the 21st century and it’s long past due that California guarantees this education for all students,” said the measure’s main proponent, Tim Ranzetta.
Ranzetta founded a nonprofit, Next Gen Personal Finance, which advocates for personal finance classes and provides free curriculum to teachers.
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