A proposal to amend California’s Proposition 47, with the support of nearly a million voters, may appear on the ballot in the November election. On the other hand, California Governor and Democratic leaders are seeking ways to exclude this proposal.
Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed to local media last Friday (June 7) that, amid opposition from Republican leaders, he and Democratic leaders in the state legislature are negotiating to remove the bipartisan-supported reform measures of Proposition 47 from the November ballot.
In San Francisco, he told reporters, “There are many negotiations happening simultaneously, including modifications to Proposition 47.”
California passed Proposition 47 in 2014, aiming to reduce the prison population by reclassifying certain serious crimes like drug possession, theft, shoplifting, and check forgery as misdemeanors, and raising the threshold for felony theft charges from $450 to $950.
After years of implementing the law that theft under $950 does not lead to imprisonment, California’s bipartisan leaders, law enforcement and judicial agencies, community leaders, voters, and thousands of businesses are hoping to address the crisis caused by Proposition 47 through an initiative called “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act.”
This reform initiative covers three main points: anyone arrested for theft three times, regardless of the amount, will be considered a felony; increased penalties for drug traffickers, especially fentanyl traffickers, to combat the opioid crisis and homelessness; and mandatory rehabilitation for individuals in possession of opioids, cocaine, and other hard drugs, with felony charges for non-compliance.
The “Californians for Safer Communities Coalition,” which advocates for this initiative, announced on April 18 that they have submitted over 900,000 voter signatures. Once the Registrar of Voters verifies that at least 546,651 of them are valid, the initiative can be placed on the November ballot.
The Secretary of State’s office in California stated that they will complete the verification process by June 27.
Meanwhile, Newsom and some Democrats have expressed opposition to the proposal. They lean towards promoting a comprehensive public safety package and believe that such measures would be more flexible in addressing crimes like retail theft.
“I just think it doesn’t need to be on the ballot,” Newsom told reporters. “Why put things on the ballot that won’t achieve the desired outcomes? Why not choose legislative measures that can be accomplished and are more flexible? I think that’s a better way.”
Republican legislative leaders, however, believe that the comprehensive public safety package is “commendable,” but assert that a stronger approach is needed to combat crime, including amending Proposition 47, and that Californians should have the right to vote on initiatives to repeal parts of Proposition 47.
Brian Jones, Republican leader in both chambers of the California legislature, stated in a release on June 7, “To combat the crime wave in California, we need to strengthen our laws both at the state legislative and election levels.”
Some aspects of the comprehensive retail crime package align with the reform proposals of Proposition 47, but a key point in the initiative is that individuals with two prior theft-related convictions will face heightened penalties for shoplifting.
Nigel Jones Calabash, co-founder of the Oakland-East Bay Independent Business Alliance, supports the statewide initiative to amend Proposition 47 that could appear on the ballot.
He said, “The ongoing threat of theft and crime undermines the fabric of our communities and threatens the survival of small businesses. This common-sense initiative is the urgently needed solution to fundamentally address California’s most concerning public safety issues.”
According to statistics from the Public Policy Institute of California, commercial burglaries in California have been on the rise, increasing by 16% since 2019, while violent or threatened commercial robberies have increased by 13% during the same period.