Tag Archive for: citizen initiative

Fighting the One-Party State at the Local Level in California

It isn’t a partisan observation to say that California is a one-party state. It’s just stating a fact. The Democratic Party controls all the levers of political power in California. Consider the evidence: GOP registration is down to 23 percent of registered voters. There is a Democratic “mega-majority” (75% or more) in both chambers of the state legislature. The GOP only holds 7 out of 53 congressional seats. Democrats occupy every state office from Governor on down. The GOP hasn’t elected a U.S. Senator to represent California since 1988. Democrats control the city councils and boards of supervisors in almost every city and county. There are roughly 10,000 elected positions in California, from school boards to utility commissions and special districts, and Democrats run candidates and have professional funded campaigns for all of them, all the time.

The reasons that California is a one-party state are also not hard to understand. For this as well, the evidence is overwhelming. Virtually every financial special interest in California supports Democrats. Public sector unions, which are almost exclusively supportive of Democratic candidates and causes, collect and spend $800 million per year. California’s high tech industry, commanding mind-blowing wealth, is solidly Democratic. California’s wealthy and influential entertainment industry is solidly Democratic. The media establishment in California is also solidly Democratic, wielding priceless influence over voters. And as if that weren’t enough, politically active billionaires spend amazing sums of money in California to support Democrats.

It takes BIG money to control California politics, and the Democrats have it: California’s own Tom Steyer spent $45 million on CA ballot measures in 2012 and 2016. Steyer spent $60 million on U.S. congressional races in 2018, including several in California. New Yorker Michael Bloomberg spent an estimated 80 million on 24 battleground congressional races, and won 21 of them – including 3 in California. These and other major donors coordinated efforts with PACs supported by public sector unions to flip seven congressional seats in California in 2018 and increase their majorities in both chambers of the state legislature.

It takes hundreds of millions per year to win in California; the Democrats always have that kind of money, and the Republicans never do.

Californians Want New Ideas

A critical mass of Californians are realizing Democrats have failed them, and this, too, is not a partisan observation. There is ample evidence of how one-party rule has failed. There are now over 150,000 homeless living in permanent encampments on the streets of California”s cities. Among these unfortunate individuals are drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill, and criminals. Some of them urgently need help, others need to be incarcerated, but permissive laws and unrealistic regulations prevent action. Instead, voters are conned into paying for “affordable” public housing that costs, on average, over $500,000 per unit. The cost to build houses is prohibitive because of expensive permits (and endless delays in getting them), excessive fees, and a shortage of land where no shortage ought to exist because of “greenbelts.”

The litany of one-party state failure is endless. Taxpayers fund expansion of light rail despite low ridership, instead of upgrading California’s roads and freeways. Californians pay among the highest prices in the nation for gasoline, electricity, and natural gas. Californians endure water rationing because the one-party state won’t make effective investments in infrastructure. Californians are driven from their homes and some of them are killed because of wildfires caused by the one-party state’s negligence and misguided regulations, not “climate change.” Californians are forced to send their children to failing K-12 public schools, and when it’s time to send them to college, they will face an unaffordable tuition burden in order to pay for the population explosion of non-teaching administrators.

The one-party state has made life in California unaffordable and unfair, and the political system is rigged. But there are ways to fight back. Regardless of party affiliation, local elected officials, and citizens through the initiative process, can pass measures that have broad populist appeal. Here are examples of nonpartisan reform that are feasible at the local level.

Examples of Local Government Reforms

(1) Curb Corporate Cronyism: One way to get at this is via a “Fairness in Business” ordinance. The city council in Yorba Linda recently approved this ordinance, which  “shall prohibit any subsidy or business incentive from being provided to one business for their gain without the same subsidy or business incentive being given to all businesses.”

(2) Attack Corporate Welfare: A related measure could attack corporate welfare via a “Taxpayer Protection Resolution.” This measure would use the gift clause in the California constitution as the legal basis to minimize if not eliminate tax incentives and subsidies. The operative language would be “Government shall not expend, loan, or allow the use of public resources, nor use its taxing power, in aid of any individual, association, corporation, or other private party, unless such expenditure, loan, or use is for a public purpose, supported by consideration, and over which the public entity exercises continuing control.”

(3) Form an Independent Fire Department: California’s cities can emulate the experience of Placentia, which withdrew from the Orange County Fire Authority, with OCFA scheduled to be effectively replaced by mid 2020. According to Voice of OC, Placentia expects to save $28 million over the next 10 years by forming its own fire department and privatizing the paramedics services. Restoring local control over firefighting and emergency response services offers a huge opportunity to right-size pay, benefits, and work rules that have been a major factor in crowding out other services in California’s cities.

(4) Require Transparency in Local Government: Adopt a “Civic Openness in Negotiations” ordinance. Several California cities have passed ordinances that are helpful during negotiations with public employee unions to adopt or renew labor agreements. Key elements of COIN ordinances are the following: require an independent contract negotiator and an independent contract auditor, require public disclosure of offers and counteroffers, require elected officials to disclose all relevant communications, and allow for public disclosure and time for comments prior to final contract approval. Why hasn’t this always been the law?

(5) Get Retiree Health Insurance Spending Under Control: Right-size retired employee health insurance subsidies. In 2015 the City of Glendale decided to no longer guarantee that retirees would pay no more than active employees for their health insurance, by no longer subsidizing the higher premiums that typically apply with older participants. As noted in Glendale’s 2017 Annual Financial Report: “In October 2015, the City Council approved unblending medical insurance premium rates between active employees and retired employees effective June 1, 2016. Accordingly, City’s actuarial liability decreased from $214 million as of 6/30/2013 to $16 million as of 6/30/2016.

(6) Keep Taxpayer Funds Out of Political Advocacy: Regulate use of city or county expenditures on “public information campaigns.” California’s public officials have sought to raise local taxes and fees through “information” campaigns designed to appeal to local voters. These are thinly veiled, barely legal forms of political campaigning. Make them explicitly illegal, through a measure that states, among other things: “This city/county will not use public money – either internally, through its own staff and treasury, or externally, through the hiring or use of outside vendors – to engage in public education; public opinion polling or studies; or communications intended or may seem to be intended to determine the outcome of political campaigns.”

(7) Pension Reform: Two major cities enacted pension reform in the past decade, San Jose, and San Diego. Both of these reforms were relentlessly attacked in court by attorneys representing public sector unions, but significant reform elements remained in effect. Some of the key reforms include: Restrict what qualifies as pension eligible compensation. Move new employees onto 401K plans. Set a maximum percent-of-salary limit on city contributions to pensions. Change age of eligibility for pension benefits. Reduce maximum allowable cost of living adjustments to retiree pensions. Cap amount of pension eligible final salary. Assign “disability” retirement awards to independent panel. Discontinue “supplemental” pension payments to retirees.

Using the Initiative Process to Enact Local Reforms

While a city council of county board of supervisors can enact local political reforms, the initiative process offers a method to bypass the local elected officials. Getting a measure onto local ballots in California is still a fairly straightforward process.

Local Initiative Process:

  • Draft ballot measure and submit to City Attorney
  • Verify signature petition meets state and local legal requirements
  • Publish legal ad within 10 days of receiving title & summary
  • Gather signatures – typically 10 percent of registered voters
  • Collect 50 percent more signatures than you need (15 percent)
  • Submit signed petitions within 180 days of getting title & summary
  • City has 30 business days to verify signatures
  • If City doesn’t enact measure, it goes before voters in next election

While all of the already listed reforms can be enacted by a governing body or by a vote of local residents, doing it by initiative actually has some advantages. Most notable, a citizen’s initiative cannot typically be overturned by a city council or board of supervisors, it can only be repealed by holding a referendum asking voters to repeal what they’d previously approved. Since the one-party state can almost always retake control of a city council or county board of supervisors where the political reformers temporarily gained a majority, the initiative route implements a solution that can be more durable and lasting.

The following examples of political reforms via the local initiative process are actually being tried in California. In North Los Angeles County, a group of volunteer activists have placed several ballot measures before voters that if approved would repeal various local tax increases, usually utility taxes. In Oxnard, a group of volunteer activists are attempting to place a slate of linked initiatives on their local ballot, a tactic which makes sweeping changes possible in one election cycle.

(1) Repeal Local Tax Increases: Sample language can be quite simple, as shown by this example from a repeal measure placed on the April 2018 ballot in Sierra Madre: “Shall the City of Sierra Madre adopt a measure repealing the City’s Utility Users Tax in its entirety?” Political reformers who succeed in getting these proposals onto local ballots should prepare for a creative counterattack in the form of an “Advisory Measure” placed adjacent to the repeal on the ballot, asking voters “if the tax repeal passes, should the City Council eliminate paramedic services, reduce and outsource police services and library services, reduce code enforcement, and fire suppression service…”

(2) Place several reforms on the ballot at once, such as was attempted in Oxnard with the following five ballot measures: Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act, which would make the city treasurer, an elected official, the head of the finance department. Keeping the Promise for Streets Act, which would deny the city certain sales tax revenue if it fails to maintain streets to specific levels. Term Limits Act, which would limit the mayor and council members to no more than two consecutive four-year terms. Open Meetings Act, which would require city meetings to begin no earlier than 5 p.m. and allow public speakers no less than three minutes to comment. Permit Simplicity Act, which would reform the permitting system with training, new guidelines and an auditing process that would lead an applicant to obtain a permit in one business day.

Other Ways to Fight for Nonpartisan Political Reform in California

To state the obvious, it is impossible to provide a comprehensive list of political reforms that can be enacted at the local level in California. A few additional noteworthy items are: reform the binding arbitration process, resist the ongoing assault on charter schools, defend the right of public employers to speak openly to employees about the costs and benefits of union membership, fight to enforce the Janus decision, and raise public awareness about the harm government unions are doing to our democracy.

The political landscape in California, unfortunately, cannot be significantly changed without state legislation or state ballot initiatives. Absolutely crippling, cruel legislation passed in Sacramento by the uni-party has brought California to the brink of becoming a feudal state, and only statewide rolling back of these laws will result in dramatic change. But citizens initiatives that work at the local level can also work at the state level. It just takes a lot more signatures to get it done.

State Initiative Process:

  • Draft ballot measure and submit to Attorney General
  • Get title & summary, begin signature gathering period
  • File petition with election officials in all 58 counties
  • Statute or referendum 5% (623,212), amendment 8% (997,139), of votes cast for governor in most recent election
  • Collect 30-50 percent more signatures than you need
  • Submit signed petitions within 180 days of getting title & summary – must be submitted by county
  • Petitions must be submitted six months prior to November election

This is a daunting undertaking, which is why most state ballot initiatives require millions in funding to pay for professional signature gatherers, attorneys and consultants. And then, if the initiative is qualified for the state ballot, additional tens of millions must be spent to run a campaign in a state with 20 million registered voters, spanning seven major television media markets.

There are exciting new ways these costs can be driven way down, way down, by using the latest online technologies and by viral networking of disgruntled, disenfranchised activists. Millions of these people still live in California, and all of them want to do something to save their state. But a good first start for reformers is to attack on the local level, where they have a chance to marshal sufficient forces to prevail.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Using Online Resources to Qualify Ballot Measures

There is a mass delusion afflicting millions of Californians. They endure a cost-of-living nearly twice the national average, high taxes, the highest incidence of poverty, the most hostile business climate, some of the worst K-12 schools, well over a $1.0 trillion in bond and pension debt, unaffordable homes, among the highest prices in the nation for gasoline and electricity, water rationing, and they drive on congested and decaying roads and freeways.

Yet the latest PPIC poll, released this month, finds 49 percent of likely voters approve of Governor Newsom’s job performance, and 47 percent approve of the state legislature.

Meanwhile, on the streets and in the parks of every major California city, over 150,000 homeless people are permanently encamped. Literally tens of thousands of them are either insane, diseased, drug addicts, criminals, or all of the above. As working Californians attempt to keep their shops open, or walk to work, or live in peace, these homeless, who need help, not “lifestyle tolerance,” defecate, shoot heroin, and shriek in terror of schizophrenic demons. But instead of declaring an emergency, Governor Newsom just throws additional billions at what is a well documented scam, where politically favored cronies build “supportive housing” at average costs of over $500,000 per unit.

Yet this same poll finds that “fifty-eight percent of Californians are optimistic that the governor and legislature will be able to work together and accomplish a lot in the next year.”

This is mass delusion. Because as long as a clique of leftist oligarch cronies and public sector union bosses control everything that happens in California, they will enrich themselves, and none of these problems – homeless, housing prices, cost-of-living, high taxes, etc. – will ever get solved. Eventually, Californians will realize that Newsom and his entire gang’s supposed solutions are scams, and their incessant virtue signaling on issues of social equity and “climate change” are diversionary cons.

California’s Red Pill Moment is Coming

In the movie Matrix there is a scene where the main character is offered a choice: He can take a blue pill and continue to live in a dream world, or he can take the red pill and confront harsh reality. As rebel leader Morpheus warns, “all I can offer you is the truth.”

The truth is this: California is a feudal state masquerading as a democracy. A supermajority of voters are either ultra-wealthy, or they are the well heeled professional class that serves them, or they are public employees whose pay and benefit packages exempt them from the laws and the costs they impose on everyone else, or they are low income residents who’ve been bought off – some by state funded benefits, others by socialist rhetoric. But it can’t go on.

It will only take a few influential Californians to take the red pill, and accurately view the harsh reality of life for most Californians, and a preference cascade will ensue. By the millions, Californians will suddenly realize that their supposed saviors are actually the exploiters. They will see social justice excess and environmentalist extremism for what it is, cover for the corporations and the bureaucrats to consolidate their power over every aspect of economic life, making it almost impossible for working people to live here.

Overnight, California will transition from having not millions, but tens of millions of engaged, politically disenfranchised residents who want to do something, anything, to save their state. And there is something they can do. They can file state ballot initiatives.

Building An Open Source Ballot Initiative Capacity

The one way Californians can bypass their legislature is via the initiative process, even though that process has been undermined by lawmakers. Recent legislation requires signature gatherers to be paid employees instead of independent contractors, greatly raising costs and liabilities. The minimum one can expect to pay to place an initiative on the California state ballot is $5 million. What if that cost could be reduced by 80 percent?

What if a comprehensive online resource for any state ballot initiative campaign could be developed, posted as open source, and made available to California’s beleaguered serfs? Who cares if the aristocrats also get their hands on it? They don’t need it. They already have all the money in the world, and they already do whatever they want. It doesn’t help them. But for the serfs, direct Democracy restores the balance of power.

With access to lists from well established, supportive grassroots organizations, along with viral endorsements from celebrities and influencers, activist Californians could be driven to a set of online resources that would comprise a one-stop shop for volunteer sustained ballot initiatives, from concept to polling to signature gathering. Those who shared their lists could have input into what initiatives would be promoted. But that would just prime the pump. The project would acquire its own momentum and attract followers who immediately recognize its breakthrough potential. These resources would include:

1 – Central online dashboard – a website that explains the project along with how the initiative process works, and provides links to all areas.
2 – YouTube instructional videos explaining each step in the process (for example, petition downloading and petition verification).
3 – A “polling” module (and report generator) where registrants vote on various initiative concepts.
4 – A status report module showing where various initiative concepts are in the pipeline.
5 – Downloadable petitions that can be printed and signed.
6 – Signature verification module to be utilized by volunteers (with professional assistance) in each county.

The technology for all of this exists. It is an idea whose time has come. In most cases utilizing off-the-shelf plugins (along with gaining access to the current California voter file from the Secretary of State), this entire online resource can easily be built. If it were built as open source and shared, multiple populist insurgencies could operate simultaneously.

Leveraging online technology and volunteers to greatly reduce dependence on paid signature gatherers has already been done by San Diego based Reform California. They successfully put a gas tax repeal measure, Proposition 6, onto the state ballot in November 2018. Although the initiative was defeated, the innovations implemented by Reform California dramatically reduced the cost to qualify their measure for the ballot, and paved the way for future efforts.

There are several populist reforms that would appeal to Californians of all political sentiments and across all backgrounds of income, ethnicity and gender. In education, union work rule reforms, more charter schools and school vouchers would all have broad appeal. In other areas, for example, spending more on water and transportation infrastructure, repealing crippling environmental edicts, reforming the disastrous downgrades of property and drug crimes, changing policies governing treatment of the homeless, and requiring pension fund investment in infrastructure revenue bonds would all have broad appeal. Californians want these reforms, but the legislators won’t do any of it.

This could be a game changer. A slate of activist generated state ballot initiatives with broad populist appeal could offer candidates a platform, it could offer opportunities to educate the electorate on alternatives to the one-party rule, and it gives activists something tangible to work on. Initiatives successfully placed onto the ballot will drain tens, if not hundreds of millions of opposition dollars out of the coffers of the aristocracy, and some of them will still win, transforming the political landscape of California.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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How Voters Can Transform California in One Election

Oxnard, California, wouldn’t immediately come to mind as the epicenter of a political revolution, but that’s exactly what it will be, if a small group of citizen activists succeed in putting not one, but five reforms in front of voters in the next major election.

The citizens initiative has been available to Californians at the state and local level for decades, but they are relatively unusual in local elections, and typically come one at a time. Local activists in San Jose and San Diego, for example, both placed pension reform initiatives on their municipal ballots, which voters passed by by landslide margins.

But what’s happening in Oxnard is unique, because voters may have the chance to vote on an entire slate of initiatives. While each one addresses a different topic of reform – financial transparency, street maintenance, term limits, open meetings, and permit streamlining – if voters approved all of them, they would have a mutually reinforcing impact. They would transform local politics in Oxnard forever, and pave the way to even bigger reforms.

At the state level, a slate of initiatives was tried in 2005 by then Governor Schwarzenegger. Taking office in Nov. 2003, Schwarzenegger tried for over a year to get California’s legislature to implement the reforms that voters had apparently mandated when they recalled the previous governor, Gray Davis. Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger’s initiatives had no viable campaign. Tepid variants of “it’s gone too far” doused the airwaves, barely, while the opposition went into beast mode. Government union professionals spent well over $100 million on a bare knuckles campaign that characterized Schwarzenegger as a man who wanted to kick firefighter widows into homeless camps, and force teachers to live on food stamps.

Meanwhile, California’s Republican party, already well on its way to imploding, along with nearly every Republican officeholder, stood on the sidelines and kept their heads down. No wonder Schwarzenegger turned into a quasi-Democrat, but that’s another story.

Imagine what California would have been like if every one of these initiatives – an extended waiting period for teacher tenure, paycheck protection, a balanced budget, and redistricting reform – along with the initiative the consultants talked Schwarzenegger out of introducing, pension reform – had been passed by California’s voters. It would be a different state today.

There is no reason, however, why this can’t be tried again. And there are people who can make it happen.

According to Forbes Magazine, there are 158 billionaires living in California. It still only costs, at most, about $5 million to get an initiative qualified for the California ballot, maybe a bit less if you’re qualifying several all at once. Figure $50 million to get ten initiatives onto the ballot, and another $50 million to wage a campaign promoting all of them at once – economies of scale.

There are 158 people in California who could do this while spending less than 10 percent of their net worth. Would you spend ten percent of your net worth to have a shot, a very real shot, at transforming California completely? Is there even one person among California’s 158 super-rich, just one person who is willing to challenge the feudal oligarchy that controls California in partnership with public sector unions and the “environmentalist” clerisy?

Here are some suggestions.

TRANSFORMING CALIFORNIA – TEN BIPARTISAN STATE BALLOT PROPOSITIONS

(1) Nuclear Power Development: California’s government will use all its powers to promote nuclear power. It will recommission San Onofre nuclear power station and construct additional reactors. It will cancel the planned decommissioning of Diablo Canyon nuclear power station and construct additional reactors. It will solicit bids for public/private financing of additional nuclear power capacity with a goal of increasing total California based nuclear power output from the current 2.1 gigawatts to at least 10 gigawatts. The state attorney general will aggressively litigate in support of fast tracking approval and construction of these projects.

(2) Renewables Pricing Reform: California will require renewable electricity suppliers to include in their pricing the costs for them to deliver reliable continuous power 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, and lower its renewable portfolio mandate to 20 percent until renewables are competitive with other forms of energy using this new pricing model.

(3) Redirect High Speed Rail Funds: The high speed rail project will be cancelled. Any remaining funds will be allocated to upgrades of existing rail to facilitate faster (120 MPH) speeds on existing inter-city rail corridors.

(4) Water Infrastructure Funding: California will issue general obligation bonds in the sum of $30 billion to accomplish the following specific projects: (a) $3.0 billion for the Sites Reservoir (supplementing funds already granted) with storage capacity of 2.0 million acre feet (MAF), (b) $3.0 billion for the Temperance Flat Reservoir with storage capacity of 1.0 MAF, (c) $7.5 billion for desalination plants on the California coast with annual capacity of 0.5 MAF, (d) $7.5 billion to retrofit urban water treatment plants statewide to potable standards with annual reuse capacity of 1.0 MAF, (e) $4.0 billion to retrofit existing aqueducts with priority on the Friant/Kern canal, (f) $5.0 billion for seismic retrofits to levees statewide, with a focus on the Delta. The timeline for submittal of proposals and awarding of funds shall not exceed 12 months. The state attorney general will aggressively litigate in support of fast tracking approval and construction of these projects.

(5) Additional Highway Funding: California will issue general obligation bonds in the sum of 30 billion to upgrade and add lanes to every major freeway in the state. Priority shall be granted to construction of high speed lanes and smart lanes. These funds will supplement funds already awarded for road construction. The timeline for submittal of proposals and awarding of funds shall not exceed 12 months. The state attorney general will aggressively litigate in support of fast tracking approval and construction of these projects.

(6) CEQA Reform: California’s Environmental Quality Act of 1970, “CEQA,” will be modified as follows: (a) duplicative lawsuits shall be prohibited, (b) all entities that file CEQA lawsuits will be required to fully disclose their identities and their environmental or non-environmental interest, (c) court rules that still enable delaying tactics will be illegal, (d) rulings that stop entire projects on a single issue will be prohibited, (d) the loser in CEQA litigation will be liable for legal fees.

(7) Pension Benefit Reform: The California constitution will be amended to eliminate the so-called “California Rule,” which allegedly prohibits modification to pension benefit accruals for future work. Pension benefits for state and local employees, for future work, shall revert to rates of accrual that were in effect in 1998.

(8) Pension Funds Infrastructure Investment: California’s state and local government employee pension funds shall be required to invest a minimum of 10 percent of their assets in general obligation bonds. These investments shall be limited to infrastructure bonds issued by the state to fund water or transportation infrastructure.

(9) K-12 Tenure, Layoff, Dismissal Policies: California teachers will be required to complete a minimum of five years of classroom teaching prior to being granted tenure. School principals shall have sole authority over what teachers may be subject to layoff, in order to allow merit instead of seniority to govern layoff decisions. The process for dismissing incompetent or ineffective teachers shall be streamlined.

(10) Charter Schools: The right of nonprofit institutions to open charter public schools shall not be infringed; no limit shall be set on the number of charter schools. Charter school approval shall be binding based on any one of the following agencies granting approval – the local school district board, the local county board of education, or the California Dept. of Education.

These initiatives, if passed, would fundamentally change California. Moreover, these are not terribly controversial. There is growing bipartisan support for all of these, and the case for these initiatives with ordinary Californians would be very strong.

Missing from this list but worth mentioning are somewhat more contentious possibilities: Repeal SB 375 to make it much easier to construct new housing across the state. Permit oil and gas drilling on the Monterey Shale formation and elsewhere within the state. Fast-track an oil pipeline into California to eliminate dangerous rail transport of nearly a half-million BBL per day into California, and augment that with an oil and gas import/export terminal on the California coast. Outlaw mandated project labor agreements on all public works projects. Begin to purge California’s higher education of its institutionalized racism and sexism by firing all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” officers in the UC and CalState systems, along with the expensive bureaucracies under them. Mandate colorblind and gender blind SAT scores once again become the top criteria for public college and university admissions.

There’s much more. The point in mentioning these more contentious possibilities is to provide a right-of-center contrast to the ten initiatives recommended above. These ten explicitly proposed initiatives are centrist. They are politically viable. They could all pass, if Californians had a chance to vote on them. How can you make a case against clean energy, abundant water, practical, next generation transportation, CEQA reform, pension reform, a new source of infrastructure financing, and quality education at last?

It is indeed possible to fundamentally transform California. Every election cycle, government unions and leftist oligarchs use their wealth to throw up self-serving state ballot initiatives, and the taxpayer organizations find themselves playing defense. It is time for some wealthy Californian who cares about the future of their state to step up, throw down, and go big. Don’t sponsor one initiative. Sponsor ten of them. Get them on the ballot. Then when it’s time to campaign, play to win.

For those aroused citizens who don’t happen to be billionaires, look to Oxnard. David’s sling is today’s local ballot initiative, and voters are the stone.

This post originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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