Pomona : Initiative Bid Falls Short

An initiative petition calling for the city to publish a yearly financial report has failed to qualify for the March 3 primary election because it fell 403 signatures short of the 4,152 required to place it on the ballot, according to City Clerk Joyce Herr.

The Los Angeles County registrar-recorder’s office reported that of the 4,332 signatures submitted for verification only 3,749 matched the original affidavits on voter registration forms.

Of the 583 signatures rejected, 299 were not those of registered voters, 150 were duplicates, 61 failed to match addresses on the registration forms, 26 were illegible, 19 gave no address, 17 were those of people who lived outside the city and 11 did not match, officials said.

The initiative petition, submitted by the grass-roots Pomona Concerned Citizens Committee, asked that the city hire an independent accountant to audit all municipal finances and publish the results in a yearly fiscal report. If the petition had qualified, it would have been the first initiative ballot measure in the city’s history.