LandWatch Action Alert
Urge Lockyer, Maldonado, Laird, and Salinas To Defend the California Constitution!

APRIL 3, 2006

What:
The constitutional rights of 16,000 Monterey County Voters to petition their government

What's needed:

1. Your calls and email to Attorney General Bill Lockyer, State Senator Abel Maldonado, and Assemblymember John Laird urging them to protect the rights of voters and restore the right of the people to legislate directly through the initiative process guaranteed in the California Constitution:
   
   

   Attorney General Bill Lockyer Phone: (916) 445-9555 Email: bill.lockyer@doj.ca.gov State Senator Abel Maldonado Phone: (916) 651-4015 Email: Senator.maldonado@sen.ca.gov Assemblymember John Laird Tel: (916) 319-2027 Email: Assemblymember.Laird@assembly.ca.gov Assemblymember Simon Salinas Tel: (916) 319-2028 Email: Assemblymember.Salina@assembly.ca.gov

   
   
   
2. A financial contribution to support LandWatch's efforts to fight for your rights.

Dear LandWatch Members:

An outrageous injustice is taking place in Monterey County. The residents of Monterey County are losing their right, guaranteed by the California Constitution, to legislate directly when their elected officials fail them. Please call or email Attorney General Bill Lockyer, State Senator Abel Maldonado, Assemblymember John Laird, and Assemblymember Simon Salinas today urging them to defend our rights and the rights of citizens throughout the state of California.

Two ballot measures supported by LandWatch have now been taken off the June 2006 ballot. First, on March 23, Federal Judge Ware retroactively applied a Ninth Circuit Court decision (Padilla) to justify the refusal of the Board of Supervisors of Monterey County to put the General Plan Initiative on the ballot. The relevant decision and order are posted below, with the correct citation to Padilla.

	Read the Judge's decision against the Community General Plan Initiative.
	Read the Judge's reasoning for the decision against the Community General Plan Initiative.

There are some critically important mistakes about the timing contained in the decision, but the key point is that the Padilla case, even if properly extended from the recall to the initiative arena, is being applied retroactively. Not only is this essentially eliminating two years of work completely consistent with the applicable law, it is eliminating your rights and those of 16,000 voters in Monterey County who signed the Community General Plan Initiative to petition their government. It is eliminating your right to vote on critical land use issues that directly impact your lives.

Even more outrageous, this past week the Board of Supervisors used the Ware decision to remove the Rancho San Juan referendum, also signed by 16,000 Monterey County voters, from the June ballot. The Board of Supervisors is required to obtain a court order to withdraw the measure from the ballot.

Elections Code section 9605 states: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, whenever a legislative body has ordered that a measure or proposal be submitted to the voters of any jurisdiction at a special election, the order of election shall not be amended or withdrawn after the 83rd day prior to the election." If Tony Anchundo, the Registrar of Voters, had any independence from the board, he would not allow them to simply withdraw it, since the 83rd day prior to the election was March 15.

As stated in Article 2 of the California Constitution

"All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require."

Obviously, the purpose of the direct democracy provisions of the California Constitution is to give the people the right to act themselves if they believe that their elected officials are not representing them properly. What is happening is an effort to eliminate or severely restrict the ability of voters to use the initiative or referendum process. Certainly in the specific case in Monterey County. Perhaps even more generally, since there are similar things happening elsewhere in California.

We need help. LandWatch is underwriting the costs of the appeals of both the Ware decision and the Board of Supervisors' decision on Rancho San Juan. Please do two things:

1. Please call or email Attorney General Lockyer to urge him to help us! It is crucial to our democracy that the Ware decision is overturned and the apparent conflict between a misapplication of the Voting Rights Act and the constitutionally protected rights of the people of California to legislate directly be clarified. He needs to hear from us to understand that what the Monterey County Board of Supervisors is doing is outrageous and unjustified. Please urge the Attorney General to intervene on our behalf in our appeal to put the Community General Plan Initiative and the Rancho San Juan Referendum on the June 6th ballot.
   
   
2. Please call or email our state representatives, State Senator Abel Maldonado and Assemblymembers John Laird and Simon Salinas, urging them to contact Attorney General Lockyer.
   
   
3. Please contribute to LandWatch to help support the legal work that is so critical to our mission: to preserve our community's economic vitality, high agricultural productivity, and the health of our environment by encouraging greater public participation in planning. Gifts to LandWatch are tax-deductible, and can be made by check or credit card. Please send contributions to Box 1876, Salinas CA 93902.

Thank you!

Regards,

Chris Fitz
Executive Director
LandWatch Monterey County

P.S. I thought former LandWatch executive director Gary Patton's comments might interest you:

There is no direct "precedent" for what Judge Ware decided, and his mix-up of the dates he cites in his opinion seems to show that he didn't really understand what happened in this particular case. More fundamentally, however, the nature of an initiative measure is to propose a new "law," and a "law" has to be clear and certain to be valid and enforceable. Spanish and English are different languages, and while you can closely approximate the meaning of a statement in English, for example, by the Spanish translation, it is technically impossible to provide a direct "equivalence" between the two languages. Thus, if two or more versions of what purports to be the same "law" are circulated in an initiative petition (and in some jurisdictions there would need to be five or more translations, to carry out the effect of Judge Ware's decision) it would not only be virtually impossible to carry around the petition physically to get signatures, there would then be a fundamental question, if the initiative were adopted, of which "version" of the "law" prevails. The decision of Judge Ware, as a practical matter, means that the Constitutional power of the initiative would be eliminated, in the case of complex land use policy matters. In other words, if the voters wanted to "do it themselves," which is what the initiative power is supposed to be all about, they really wouldn't be able to accomplish that. The only way to correct bad decisions by the Board of Supervisors would be to "recall" all the Board Members who had voted wrong. It's hard to overstate the importance of the legal issues now being decided in connection with the Monterey County Community General Plan initiative.

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

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Posted 04.03.06