When does a “citizen” initiative cease being a citizens’ initiative? That’s a question we’ve been asking since 2017 when the Supreme Court’s decision in California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland suggested that if citizens put a measure on the ballot to raise taxes, the two-thirds vote requirement didn’t apply.
Ever since, we’ve seen a flood of these so-called citizens’ initiatives bankrolled by the very special interests (often in collusion with government) that will benefit from its passage. Just this week we got yet another example of that. A coalition of “nonprofit community organizations and labor” collected more than 32,000 signatures to place a half-cent sales tax increase measure on the November 2026 ballot in Fresno County.
You’d think that would be the end of it, but this one took some weird turns. First, the initiative failed to qualify on a random sample. That meant every signature had to be counted and significantly delayed certification. Then the Fresno County Board of Supervisors expressed concerns about the specificity of the plan and its own ability to successfully implement the initiative.
Proponents claim that it’s simply an extension of the county’s 40-year-old Measure C. But it’s no mere extension. It’s a whole new spending plan. The initiative dedicates 25 percent of the tax to transit and 65 percent to local road repair. The remainder goes to “regional connectivity, innovation, and administration.” What does that mean? Well, the Board of Supervisors wanted to know so they requested a 30-day study of the impacts before placing it on the ballot. In doing so, they effectively pushed the initiative to the 2028 ballot because the study was unlikely to be completed in time to meet this year’s deadline.
The initiative is controversial and there was undoubtedly politics involved in the decision, but the Board was acting within the clear authority given to it by the Elections Code. It says that when presented with a certified initiative, they can do one of three things: adopt it, place it on the ballot or send it off to be studied before doing one of the other two.
That’s when a bill appeared in the Legislature. Assembly Bill 1923 was a “gut and amend,” bypassing the usual committee process. It would require “any Fresno County initiative petition that has been certified as sufficient by the Fresno County Registrar of Voters on or before July 8, 2026, to be submitted, without alteration, to the voters at the November 3, 2026, statewide general election.”
Normally, that might be something we would support. While we don’t like that the initiative is abusing the “Upland” loophole that makes it easier to raise your taxes, if the tables were turned, we wouldn’t like some technicality used to take one of our taxpayer protection initiatives off the ballot.
Except, they would gleefully use a technicality to take something of ours off the ballot – and have. That’s the difference. It would never be done for us or seemingly anyone else, and that’s the problem.
In fact, while AB 1923 was being gutted and amended, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors did exactly what the Fresno board did. Faced with a qualified citizen initiative that would raise the minimum wage to $30 per hour with over 100,000 signatures collected and certified by the Alameda Registrar of Voters, the board voted 3-2 to order the same 30-day study under the same Elections Code section, knowingly moving the measure off the November ballot to the next election in 2028. Same statute, same options, same choice. No bill to override Alameda.
Why? Because what the Legislature is doing in Fresno is clearly designed to allow the measure’s politically favored proponents to abuse the Upland loophole before Proposition 43 closes it in November. The court-created loophole allows certain earmarked special taxes to pass with fewer votes than the two-thirds vote otherwise required. That’s why being on the 2026 ballot is so important for them and why it isn’t important enough for legislative action on the minimum wage proposal in Alameda County.
Don’t believe them when they tell you this is about the will of the people or democracy. If it was, they would have passed a bill that said a board may not use the 30-day study to move a qualified initiative off the next ballot. They didn’t. This is the Legislature putting its thumb on the scale to get one “citizen” initiative tax increase passed.When does a citizen initiative cease being a citizens’ initiative? We’d like an answer.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.