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The ballot fights for mayor and City Council districts aren't the only potential offerings of next year's April election. In fact, an upcoming court hearing could shed light on whether one of the city's most divisive topics finds its way before voters in 2014.
Since before the California Supreme Court effectively ruled that Long Beach and other cities could ban medical marijuana collectives, there have been at least two groups in the city working on gathering signatures to bring dispensaries back.
The Long Beach Citizens' and Patients' Rights PAC gathered 43,000 signatures to present to the City Clerk's Office earlier this year. The signatures were on a petition for a law similar to what the city originally enacted when it attempted to regulate medical marijuana collectives a few years ago.
However, City Clerk Larry Herrera and his staff determined that the effort came up short – short by approximately 18 signatures. Staff performs a random sampling of 3% of the signatures and extrapolates the numbers for the larger total.
The petitioning process required 15% of Long Beach's 251,000 registered voters sign in order to enact a possible special election on the proposed law.
"Once we found out it was short, we did a little research ourselves, and checked out what was bad to figure out what the mistakes were," said Jeremy Coltharp, lead petitioner. "There wasn't much they could do to fix it, so we had to file a federal lawsuit."
A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 9 in regards to the PAC asking for a preliminary injunction on the city. The basis of the lawsuits hammers at two different merits.
First, the group and its lawyers are contending that the city should have to consider the law for next April's general primary elections. City code allows a petitioning process to move forward for general elections with only 10% of registered voters. The argument from the other side, they said, is that the PAC originally filed for a special election – not denoting also for a general election.
The second contention is that the group has found 14 signatures they said should be valid because they were struck due to address problems – the signees changed addresses during the process.
"The federal law is clear that these voters should have been counted," said Jina Nam, attorney for the PAC. "They were proactive voters and they changed their information right away."
Another four signatures, she said, were errors from the Los Angeles County Registrar's Office, which it admitted.
Attorneys for the PAC said they expect an injunction win for them to either make the City Clerk's Office count all the signatures, or just have the clerk move the petition forward to City Council based on the general election percentage needed. If that were to happen, the City Council could put it on the ballot, enact it immediately or seek to alter it and enact it.
"We're in a holding pattern until that date (Sept. 9)," Coltharp said.
Herrera said that so far, the city has answered and denied some of the allegations in the lawsuit. The City Attorney's Office is handling the case.
"We feel like we are justified in our actions at the time we took our actions," said Barry Myers, deputy city attorney. "We're just doing what the statute says to do based on the language of the initiative."
Another group, Long Beach Patients' Access Campaign, announced last week that it was halting its paid petitioning process after gathering 12,000 signatures. Jason Aula, who drafted the petition ordinance and is a political consultant for the group, said they will move to get more signatures now through volunteer efforts. Aula also is a First District council candidate.
LBPAC's law also would have been similar to previous regulations, but with added caveats like energy offsets and a medical marijuana commission to oversee it.
"At the end of the day, the importance is the merit of these petitions," Aula said. "I want the (upcoming court) ruling to work for them, but I'm not sure it will. We're asking for a special election or a general election. I feel like the legislation is very innovative. The ordinance is spreading and I'm confident that this is going to get done."
The clock will be ticking for Aula and his supporters, as the petitioning process will need to be filed for them sometime around September.
"We wanted to be honest with the public and our donors (about where the process was) and we are still going to be working with our volunteers," he added.
News Hawk- Truth Seeker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: gazettes.com
Author: Jonathan Van Dyke
Contact: Contact Us - Gazettes.com, Long Beach California: Site
Website: Medical Marijuana Petitioners Continue Fight - Gazettes.com, Long Beach California: Government
Since before the California Supreme Court effectively ruled that Long Beach and other cities could ban medical marijuana collectives, there have been at least two groups in the city working on gathering signatures to bring dispensaries back.
The Long Beach Citizens' and Patients' Rights PAC gathered 43,000 signatures to present to the City Clerk's Office earlier this year. The signatures were on a petition for a law similar to what the city originally enacted when it attempted to regulate medical marijuana collectives a few years ago.
However, City Clerk Larry Herrera and his staff determined that the effort came up short – short by approximately 18 signatures. Staff performs a random sampling of 3% of the signatures and extrapolates the numbers for the larger total.
The petitioning process required 15% of Long Beach's 251,000 registered voters sign in order to enact a possible special election on the proposed law.
"Once we found out it was short, we did a little research ourselves, and checked out what was bad to figure out what the mistakes were," said Jeremy Coltharp, lead petitioner. "There wasn't much they could do to fix it, so we had to file a federal lawsuit."
A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 9 in regards to the PAC asking for a preliminary injunction on the city. The basis of the lawsuits hammers at two different merits.
First, the group and its lawyers are contending that the city should have to consider the law for next April's general primary elections. City code allows a petitioning process to move forward for general elections with only 10% of registered voters. The argument from the other side, they said, is that the PAC originally filed for a special election – not denoting also for a general election.
The second contention is that the group has found 14 signatures they said should be valid because they were struck due to address problems – the signees changed addresses during the process.
"The federal law is clear that these voters should have been counted," said Jina Nam, attorney for the PAC. "They were proactive voters and they changed their information right away."
Another four signatures, she said, were errors from the Los Angeles County Registrar's Office, which it admitted.
Attorneys for the PAC said they expect an injunction win for them to either make the City Clerk's Office count all the signatures, or just have the clerk move the petition forward to City Council based on the general election percentage needed. If that were to happen, the City Council could put it on the ballot, enact it immediately or seek to alter it and enact it.
"We're in a holding pattern until that date (Sept. 9)," Coltharp said.
Herrera said that so far, the city has answered and denied some of the allegations in the lawsuit. The City Attorney's Office is handling the case.
"We feel like we are justified in our actions at the time we took our actions," said Barry Myers, deputy city attorney. "We're just doing what the statute says to do based on the language of the initiative."
Another group, Long Beach Patients' Access Campaign, announced last week that it was halting its paid petitioning process after gathering 12,000 signatures. Jason Aula, who drafted the petition ordinance and is a political consultant for the group, said they will move to get more signatures now through volunteer efforts. Aula also is a First District council candidate.
LBPAC's law also would have been similar to previous regulations, but with added caveats like energy offsets and a medical marijuana commission to oversee it.
"At the end of the day, the importance is the merit of these petitions," Aula said. "I want the (upcoming court) ruling to work for them, but I'm not sure it will. We're asking for a special election or a general election. I feel like the legislation is very innovative. The ordinance is spreading and I'm confident that this is going to get done."
The clock will be ticking for Aula and his supporters, as the petitioning process will need to be filed for them sometime around September.
"We wanted to be honest with the public and our donors (about where the process was) and we are still going to be working with our volunteers," he added.
News Hawk- Truth Seeker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: gazettes.com
Author: Jonathan Van Dyke
Contact: Contact Us - Gazettes.com, Long Beach California: Site
Website: Medical Marijuana Petitioners Continue Fight - Gazettes.com, Long Beach California: Government
