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Civic Circus with Ankur Patel breaks down local politics, with a weekly report on city, county, and state bureaucracies.

Even though most of us aren’t elected officials, we, as a citizenry have the ability to pass laws through ballot measures, propositions, initiatives, and referenda. In the end, it is the same at all levels of government: If you can get enough signatures in support of a specific law, it can be presented to the voters in an election.

In California we have had a long and eventful experiment with direct democracy. In 1978 voters passed one of the most well known propositions: Prop 13, which governs our property taxes. That proposition is still today being debated – just this last week there was a panel discussion at California State University Northridge on Prop 13.

Other laws that demonstrate the power of the ballot include proposition 19 in 2010, which would have legalized marijuana and proposition 8 in 2008 which banned gay marriage.

Unfortunately, because it often takes more than 500,000 signatures to get a proposition on the ballot in California, the organizational challenges have turned the process into one that favors large corporations and big donors as opposed to grassroots activists.

With 3 ballot measures awaiting the statewide June 2012 elections, 1 approved for the November 2012 elections, 25 other referenda and initiatives cleared for circulation, 2 already having failed to gather enough signatures, and 12 more waiting to be read by the attorney general’s office in order to be cleared for circulation, the process is a messy one.

However, at the City level things are a little different. Because City Council Members have a better feel for what is going on at the ground level, they often scoop up potential voter supported initiatives, water them down, and put them on the ballot as a political tool.

The last LA City election on March 8th had us voting on 2 propositions, 8 charter amendments, and one measure. You may be wondering what came of those ordinances that did pass.

The Charter Amendment L for Library increased the Library Department’s guaranteed share of the City’s property taxes from 0.0175% to 0.0300% (an increase of 0.0125%). We are seeing the benefits from that already as the libraries have been reopened for Monday operations.

Two of the ballot measures last March had to do with the LA Department of Water and Power. The Office of Accountability, headed by the Ratepayer Advocate was resoundingly approved to be the public’s eyes, ears, and voice in regards to our water and power bills. But elected officials just appointed the people who are going to decide who the director of the newly created agency will be – this seven months after it passed.

Taxing medicinal marijuana was approved, but the whole medicinal marijuana industry is still in legal limbo and so how much tax has actually been collected and how much will be collected is not clear.

The oil production tax was voted down, probably because people thought that this would increase the price of gasoline, but the fact that one one millionth of the world’s oil is going to be taxed $1.42 more isn’t going to raise the price of anything.

One of the state initiatives being circulated right now is the Oil Extraction Tax for Education. It would generate two to three billion dollars for education in the state of California by taxing the oil that comes out of our ground. California is the third leading producer of oil in the country, but the only one that doesn’t tax the oil that comes out of OUR ground. There are clauses in the law that prevents the tax from being passed on to people at the pump and even refineries.

Unfortunately, it is an uphill battle to get enough valid signatures to write a law, but the process can be an organizational tool and strategy, if it is kept in the hands of the people. We can use the ballot process constructively, and we should be writing laws that make it easier to make the right decision, not voting in laws that give clowns the right of way.

Ankur Patel with Civic Circus.