Judge rules Sacramento can keep rent control measure off November ballot
A judge has granted the city of Sacramento’s request to allow it to keep a rent control measure off the Nov. 3 ballot.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steven M. Gevercer issued the ruling Friday, allowing the city to leave the measure off the ballot.
Even though the measure collected the required number of signatures last year, city charters cannot be changed by a direct initiative, the decision read.
Michelle Pariset, a community activist whom the city filed a lawsuit against last month, said she plans to file an appeal with hopes the judge will require the council to place the measure on the ballot by the Aug. 7 deadline.
“If this decision stands, then the citizen initiative process is basically worthless and we can’t let that be,” Pariset said. “Forty-four thousand people wanted to put this on the ballot, wanted to vote and they should be allowed to do that.”
Tenant advocates say the ballot initiative would protect renters more effectively than a city rent control ordinance, which took effect in September, or the state rent control law, effective Jan. 1.
The ballot initiative would prohibit landlords from raising rents more than 5% annually. That’s compared to 6% plus inflation allowed in the city ordinance and 5% plus inflation in the state law. Inflation is currently at 0.8%, due to the coronavirus pandemic, but last year it fluctuated between 2 and 3%. The initiative would also be permanent, while the city’s ordinance will be reevaluated after five years.
In the lawsuit, the city asked the judge to declare the initiative is invalid, is too vague to be implemented and has been withdrawn by its proponents.
The measure originally had three proponents, Pariset, Margarita Maldonado and Omega Brewer. Once the city adopted their version of rent control last year, Maldonado and Brewer signed a letter allowing the city to withdraw the measure, but Pariset did not. That created a unique question as to whether the council still had to put it on the ballot. In the lawsuit, the city made the case that it did not.
The advocates’ version would also include an independent rent board, modeled after one used in San Francisco.
The city said the rent board, as described in the measure, would be impossible to implement.
“(The board is) so vague, uncertain and inconsistent with the remainder of the Charter and so logistically flawed as to be incapable of effective implementation,” the city’s lawsuit stated.
The City Council is historically more likely to listen to landlords than to tenants, argued Pariset’s attorney Frederic Woocher during the Friday hearing. The rent board would be designed to give tenants an avenue “to accomplish things they can’t get through the City Council.”
“If the court says this is no good, I don’t know how they could ever do it,” said Woocher.
Assistant city attorney Matthew Ruyak said the city already has elected officials who are accountable to the voters on all manners of city operations.
“It baffles me for me to hear you say it’s just a very small change where you have double the amount of elected officials in the city, totally changing the dynamic of how the government runs,” Ruyak said.
There was not a lot of case law for the attorneys to review in the case, Ruyak said.
Councilwoman-Elect Katie Valenzuela said she worries the decision will set a “dangerous” precedent, making it harder for charter cities in the state planning rent control ballot initiatives.
“Sacramento’s fight isn’t just Sacramento’s fight any more,” Valenzuela said after watching the hearing on her phone outside the courthouse with a group of tenant advocates. “This is a threat to the initiative process. It’s a big deal.”
The coronavirus pandemic, which could eventually cause a wave of renters to lose their housing, is even more of a reason for the city to pass stricter rent control, Valenzuela said.
Ruyak agreed the topic is very important during the pandemic, but said that is even more of a reason the elected council should make the decisions.
“These issues need to be debated in public rather than a clip board that you sign when you’re walking into the grocery store,” Ruyak said.
This story was originally published July 31, 2020 at 2:35 PM.
