The Assembly Appropriations Committee today rejected -- for the second time -- legislation that would shift the writing of ballot measure titles and summaries from the attorney general's office to the legislative analyst's office.
The proliferation of ballot initiatives has resulted in numerous political and legal squabbles over their official summaries, which appear on petitions and the ballot if they qualify -- such as the one over Proposition 8, the 2008 measure that outlawed same-sex marriage.
Proponents contended that Attorney General Jerry Brown, a gay marriage supporter and Democratic candidate for governor, skewed the measure's official summary to bias would-be petition signers and voters against it.
Brown's office described the measure as "Limit on marriage" on initiative petitions. Later, after it qualified for the ballot and after the state Supreme Court overturned an earlier measure banning same-sex marriage, he revised the ballot title to read: "Eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry." Proposition 8's supporters went to court with their complaints but a Superior Court judge upheld Brown's wording.
Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, introduced Assembly Bill 1968, which would shift the ballot title and summary writing to the Legislature's budget analyst, which already provides the official fiscal impact statements on ballot measures. He had introduced similar measures in 2008 and 2009, only to see them die.
Niello said, in a written argument for the bill, that leaving the responsibility with an elected attorney general means ballot language is "susceptible to politicization, causing it to be inaccurate and misleading. This leads to a confused and frustrated, rather than educated and engaged, electorate. While initiatives themselves are inherently political, the ballot title and summary should not be."
Niello's bill won approval of the Assembly Elections and Reapportionment Committee but failed on two votes in the Appropriations Committee, with voting largely along party lines. A constitutional amendment that would also be needed to make the shift was also killed in the Assembly Elections and Reapportionment Committee.
The full text, analyses and votes on the bill are available here.
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