The California governor and top Democrats in the state have abandoned a last-minute plan to ask voters whether a landmark criminal justice bill should be reformed.
California Democrats over the weekend had outlined plans to put a measure on the November ballot that would ask voters to approve major reforms to Proposition 47, a 1994 ballot measure that changed some felonies to misdemeanors.
But on Tuesday, they abruptly changed course and said they would not be able make Wednesday’s cutoff to finalize the measure’s inclusion on the ballot.
Gavin Newsom, the governor, blamed a tight schedule for withdrawing the proposal.
“We are unable to meet the ballot deadline to secure necessary amendments to ensure this measure’s success, and we will be withdrawing it from consideration,” Newsom said in a statement.
Newsom will be in Washington on Wednesday for a meeting with other governors at the White House.
The Democrats’ proposal was a last-minute response to a competing ballot measure to reform Proposition 47 drawn up by a coalition of law enforcement groups, business groups and conservative and moderate lawmakers.
That tough-on-crime proposal envisioned far-reaching reforms that would, according to experts, effectively gut Proposition 47. It would increase penalties for people convicted of stealing three times and create a new class of offense – called “treatment-mandated felony” – to charge those in possession of hard drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Its proponents, which include the San Francisco mayor London Breed and many district attorneys, say it would help fight retail theft, as well as a growing homelessness and addiction crisis. Its detractors say it would do little to address the complex problems the state is facing, and instead drive up the number of incarcerated people.
For months, Newsom and many Democrats argued that undoing Proposition 47 was a misguided and ineffective approach to tackling retail theft, and instead proposed a set of legislative reforms.
“I don’t think there’s a need to have it on the ballot. Why have something on the ballot that doesn’t actually achieve the goals that are intended?” Newsom said in June. “Why do something that can’t be done legislatively with more flexibility? I think it’s a better approach to governing.”
The governor and the lawmakers tried to negotiate with the coalition to drop the initiative. As negotiations failed, they announced their own ballot initiative over the weekend. Their measure, which they intended to call Prop 2, proposed to punish repeat thieves more harshly if their convictions occured within a spate of three years.