Newsom scraps plan to put California Prop 47 reform measure on ballot

The California governor and top Democrats in the state have abandoned a last-minute plan to ask voters whether a landmark criminal justice bill should be reformed.

California Democrats over the weekend had outlined plans to put a measure on the November ballot that would ask voters to approve major reforms to Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot measure that changed some theft and drug possession felonies to misdemeanors.

But on Tuesday, they abruptly changed course and said they would not be able make Wednesday’s cutoff to finalize the measure’s inclusion on the ballot.

Gavin Newsom, the governor, blamed a tight schedule for withdrawing the proposal.

“We are unable to meet the ballot deadline to secure necessary amendments to ensure this measure’s success, and we will be withdrawing it from consideration,” Newsom said in a statement.

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The Democrats’ proposal was a last-minute response to a competing ballot measure, called “the homelessness, drug addiction and theft reduction act”, that was proposed in September and officially made it to the ballot on 28 June. The coalition’s proposal would technically not repeal Prop 47, but would undo key components of it by increasing penalties for a third theft offense and create a new class of offense, called “treatment-mandated felony”, to charge those in possession of hard drugs like cocaine, meth and fentanyl.

The proposal has the backing of district attorneys, business leaders and law enforcement, who have argued that Prop 47 has left officers and prosecutors hamstrung and unable to deal with lower-level theft and drug offenses.

Other proponents, which include the San Francisco mayor London Breed and many district attorneys, say it would help fight retail theft, as well as a growing homelessness and addiction crisis.

Detractors of the measure say it would do little to address the complex problems the state is facing, and instead drive up the number of incarcerated people costing the state millions of dollars that through Prop 47 were saved and passed along to local re-entry, mental health and drug treatment programs.

“It’s one of those monumental pieces of legislation, and it got us over the hill for something we’ve been fighting for for so long,” Kent Mendoza, associate director of advocacy and community organizing the anti-recidivism coalition, said of Prop 47. “It gives counties an opportunity to be bold and approach these things differently. This is what allows us to maybe save 10 people who wouldn’t have this support.”

Newsom and many Democrats have fiercely opposed the coalition’s proposal, arguing that undoing Proposition 47 was a misguided and ineffective approach to tackling retail theft, and instead proposed a set of legislative reforms.

“I don’t think there’s a need to have it on the ballot. Why have something on the ballot that doesn’t actually achieve the goals that are intended?” Newsom said in June. “Why do something that can’t be done legislatively with more flexibility? I think it’s a better approach to governing.”

The governor and the lawmakers tried to negotiate with the coalition to drop the initiative. But as those negotiations failed, they announced their own ballot initiative over the weekend.

Their measure, which they intended to call Prop 2, proposed to punish repeat thieves more harshly if their convictions occurred within a spate of three years.

Greg Totten, the co-chair of Californians for safer communities, the primary group backing the ballot measure that would gut Prop 47, said that he was “pleased” to see Newsom back away from his counter legislation and hoped that both sides could find a path forward.

“We are pleased The Governor and Legislature have dropped their countermeasure and welcome them to join our campaign to responsibly amend Prop 47 to deal with retail theft, the fentanyl crisis and homelessness,” Totten said in a statement .

And as November nears and the fate of Prop 47 rests in the hands of voters, Mendoza with ARC said that his group will likely begin education campaigns for voters to shift perceptions about what causes people to commit crimes and the best ways to keep them out of the cycle.

“It’s probably gonna be a communications strategy: sharing success stories,” Mendoza said. “Uplifting the success of people who have been in prison to show that people can do good. We might do town halls in communities that need more education, in communities who may not see these things the way we tend to say we see it.”