Oxnard, CA | Sad Day for Citizen Initiative Rights

Late last month the Ventura County Superior Court telegraphed its intended decision that two of our voter-approved initiatives — Measures M and N — are to be declared invalid because they are supposedly administrative, not legislative, in nature. We disagree with that decision and intend to appeal, as the stakes are simply too high.

The standard used for the court’s decision would put almost all local initiatives in peril. If those initiatives can be overturned on these grounds, what ones can’t?

Based on a recent California case cited in his June 23 column, Dan Walters suggests that initiatives that make land use decisions might also be deemed “administrative,” so are the various SOAR initiatives adopted by voters in Ventura County at risk?

Would portions of Measure B, the City Council sponsored initiative that voters adopted in March 2020, fail this standard?

And what about Ventura County’s Measure O, the cannabis initiative adopted by county voters this past November? That 59-page measure defines in great detail local zoning and other land use conditions for a pilot program for commercial cannabis cultivation on up to 500 acres of county land. Is that administrative?

At risk in this case, Measure M was written to require that the Oxnard City Council hold its meetings after work so more people could attend, provide more information in advance, and guaranteed each member of the public three minutes to speak. It was hyperbole on the part of the court to suggest that this was equivalent to our requiring the council to use Number 2 pencils. Measure M expands upon the Brown Act to give the public greater access to meetings, which is expressly allowed by state statute (see Government Code 54953.7).

Measure N altered the date on which Measure O’s sales tax would expire and required that street standards be met for it to continue. It’s baffling that the judge declared that changing the expiration date of a tax measure was not a tax measure.

While his ruling is not yet final, it’s unlikely that the judge will arrive at a different final decision.

The likely consequences of invalidating Measure M are that the City Council will again move their committee meetings to the middle of the workday so that you can’t attend, no longer make prerecorded oral staff reports available to the public ahead of the meetings, and will restrict your opportunity to speak on a matter to as little as one minute. We will also return to an era of overly long staff presentations intended to drag out council meetings to very late at night to discourage the public from participating.

The likely consequence of invalidating Measure N is that City Hall will no longer place a higher priority on fixing streets to a standard that you said was important to you. Instead, the City Manager’s priorities are salary increases for city staff and spending $40 million as a down payment towards constructing an aquatic center…though they recently alleged to the courts they were in a financial hardship situation.

In contrast to our forebears who reserved for the People the power of initiative, Oxnard’s City Hall and City Council believe you have almost no role in governmental affairs that does not meet the approval of the City Council or the City Manager. To them you are not citizens, you are their subjects.

Of course, we are not deterred and are still committed to Moving Oxnard Forward. We will continue to push for reform at City Hall by informing the public, exercising the People’s power of initiative, and asking the courts to remedy this ruling.

Aaron Starr

Moving Oxnard Forward

Get Citizensjournal.us Headlines free  SUBSCRIPTION. Keep us publishing – DONATE