18,000 Signatures for Billboard Referendum; Here's What You Should Know

This morning at 9:30am, the people behind a signature drive to stop city's recently-approved digital billboard plan will deliver 18,000 signatures to the city clerk.

The plan, approved in late March would let Metro/Allvision place digital billboards along the freeway in exchange for removing billboards along the railroad tracks.  Elections Code 9237-9247 outlines the process for calling a referendum.

This is a new thing for Santa Clarita, so I'm sure you have plenty of questions. Here are a bunch of answers. 

In California, a referendum is where the people vote on a given proposal put forth by the government. This is usually something the government puts it on the ballot for the voters' approval (like a school bond), but with enough signatures the people can also call a referendum on a law that's been passed (but before it goes into effect).

An initiative is where the people (as opposed to the government) write the law itself and gather the signatures. Most high-profile propositions in California are initiatives (e.g. Prop. 8). In this case, the referendum would be a yes or no vote on an ordinance recently passed by the city council. An initiative would be a whole new law.

Either by a vote of the city council or by a petition of the people.

A referendum is much harder. Both require the same number of signatures, but an initiative gets 180 days to gather signatures, while a referendum has just 30 days from the day the law was passed (the day it gets the final signature of the city clerk). 

Because a referendum like this stops the ordinance from ever taking effect, which happens 30 days after it's passed. A petition with enough signatures suspends the ordinance.

11,170, which is 10% of the registered voters as of county's last report to the Secretary of State, which was 111,697. 

Petitions always have invalid signatures. Sometimes lots of them.

Probably. In order to qualify, these 18,000 signatures need a validity rate of 61.1%. It's uncommon, but not unheard of, to see rates lower than that. 

A 2008 CalTech study looked at some propositions that made it on the ballot in California and found an average signature validity rate of 75.5%, which would give this petition a healthy 13,590 signatures. 

The same study found those successful petitions submitted an average of 162% of the signatures they needed, almost exactly as much as they are submitting today (161%).

There are a few reasons, some more straightforward than others. Maybe someone isn't registered to vote, or maybe they don't live in the city. Maybe they signed twice. But they'll also confirm that your name, address and signature match your voter registration information. You might be surprised how many well-intentioned signers will get their signatures tossed.

The proponents of a petition get some legal right to review the process, but opponents do not.

Probably not. They'll begin with a random sample and validate those signatures. Then they'll take that validity rate and estimate the number of valid signatures. If it's more than 110% of the signatures needed (12,287) the petition automatically qualifies (that would be a validity rate of 68.3%). If it's less than 95%, or 10,612, it's disqualified. If it lands between those two numbers, they'll validate the signatures one by one. 

The city clerk will do an initial count and confirm that the submitted forms conform to the law. After a few days, the forms will go to the county for signature verification. If the sample projects over 110%, we'll know very soon. If they need to validate every signature, it can take up to 30 days.

The city council will have a choice: repeal the ordinance right away, or put it on the ballot.

Yeah. It's probably because of the cost of an election. The council can just hit undo. Likewise, with an initiative, a council can pass the proposed ordinance instead of putting it on the ballot. But don't worry, the outcome is the same.

It would either be a special election in as little as 88 days, or along with the next council election in November 2016. 

They can't pass it, or anything similar, for another year. For practical and political reasons, we probably won't see this exact deal come to the table again.

The ordinance that the council passed in March becomes law. Metro's board still needs to give their final approval to the deal, which is still and open question.

Because a referendum must have the full text of the ordinance it's looking to repeal, these packets were about 40 pages (double-sided) each. I believe that there were spaces for just 24 signatures per packet, so 18,000 signatures means at least 750 packets and 30,000 pages in all.

According to this site, about three and a half.

They'll be in the same room where they kept the ballots in the last election. You can watch live video, complete with DVR-style playback right here.

An unlikely paring of a group of activists known as CABB (Citizens Against Billboard Blight) and some combination of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America and Clear Channel Outdoor. But their mutual interests only go about as far as circulating the same petition. 

Well, not quite. Clear Channel and the OAAA think the deal should have happened another way, and they also argue that this could have been done in a way that makes more sense for the city. Simply put, they don't want to lose their railroad billboards for nothing and if the city is going to allow digital billboards, they'd like a chance to bid (they lost to Allvision for the MTA contract in 2010).

No. In California, paid signature gatherers worked to place the earliest ballot initiatives in the 1910s. In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled than bans against paid gatherers violated the First Amendment. Today, just about every ballot petition drive enlists paid gatherers.

Early reports pegged it an industry-standard $3-$4 per signature. After the blockers came to town, this went up to $7 per signature. This was on top or any money they made from collecting signatures for statewide petitions.

It appears that it was some combination of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America and Clear Channel Outdoor by way of one or more signature gathering companies. 

No. The CABB crowd is made up of volunteers that circulated petitions, but the vast majority of signatures came from paid gatherers. 

CABB appeared to have formed in the audience of the city council meetings when this deal was approved. Their most active members are Michael Oliveri, Patti Sulpizio and Steve Petzold. They along with Timben Boydston and Alan Ferdman were responsible for convincing the MTA to delay their approval of the deal so that the referendum could run its course. Their Facebook page is here.

So-called blockers are people paid to disrupt signature gathering. The tactics include interrupting conversation between gatherers and the public, crowding out a gatherer's space, intimidating or otherwise scaring potential signers, circulating phony petitions, creating disruptions, and so forth. Ironically, most are signature gatherers who take a steady pay to work for the "dark side."

It's my understanding that most blockers were getting paid $1,000 a week plus a bonus if the referendum fails to qualify. Many blockers also circulated statewide petitions.

All signs point to Allvision, the Metro-designated subcontractor that was responsible for putting the deal together with the city and who would also be responsible for running the billboards. Two sources tell me that they admitted as much to the MTA, and they would not return requests for comment to us, KHTS or The Signal. My email to their hometown lobbyist Arthur Sohikian went unanswered too.

Yes and no. Much of it is considered free speech, a sort of counter-protest. Other things, like preventing people from signing, threatening assault and battery, offering to buy signatures, and fraud are illegal under the Elections Code 18603 and 18630.

Allvision's contract with Metro is set up so they pay the costs of putting these billboard deals together upfront, so they're already out a lot of money on a deal that they thought was sealed. If this went through, they'd be looking at a millions of dollars over the first 30 years of the 50-year deal. 

No. Depending on how you count it, we've had as many as four referendums and one initiative. In 1987, we began with two: to become a city (69% yes) and we chose at-large council seats over districts (59%). In 1992, a slow-growth initiative failed (44%). An open space tax was rejected in 2006, only to be approved in 2007, but those were a little different because only property owners could vote.

It's both, but referendums is better. More on that here.

Yes and no. Of the three council members that voted for the plan, only Marsha McLean was up for reelection, and she only got about 38% of the vote. Laurene Weste doesn't participate on the issue because of a conflict of interest (several billboards are located very close to her house and adjacent land that she owns. Dante Acosta didn't campaign on either side of the issue. 

No. I live just outside of the city in unincorporated Saugus, so if I signed, my signature would have been invalid.