Group Urges Local Initiative Rules Changes

A bipartisan group is urging major reforms in the local ballot initiative process, which it says is plagued by deceptive advertising, overly secretive special interest participation and rules that prevent fiddling with even poorly drafted propositions once campaigns have been launched.

The California Commission on Campaign Financing, in a report to be released today, says that local ballot initiative campaigns have drifted too far from their grass-roots origins and need sweeping changes to allow the electorate to function responsibly when bypassing elected officials and enacting laws itself.

Such local initiatives are a significant source of land-use policy in the Los Angeles area, the panel said.

Key changes advocated by the private nonprofit group include stricter disclosures of an initiative’s financial backers and a broader role for local legislative bodies, which would be allowed to amend initiatives by negotiating compromises with proponents. Currently, city councils and boards of supervisors are restricted to a take-it-or-leave-it choice: They can either approve it as written or put it on the ballot.

In a two-year study of 40 ballot measures in 20 cities in Los Angeles County, the commission found that initiatives were often backed by well-heeled special interests, such as the Claremont developer who spent $139 per vote, a local record, in an unsuccessful attempt to sell his city on more development, and Occidental Oil, which spent $8 million in a failed bid to persuade voters to allow it to drill along the Pacific Palisades.

The typical measure in the Los Angeles area had only three contributors, the commission found. Donors of $100,000 or more accounted for 80% of funds raised; donors of $1 million or more accounted for 48%. By comparison, $100,000-plus donors accounted for only 67% of funds raised in statewide initiative campaigns; million-dollar-plus donors, 37%.

Businesses dominated the giving. “Corporate funding of local initiative campaigns has apparently become a part of the ‘cost of doing business’ in the Los Angeles area,” the report found.

Yet the identities of these contributors and their industry affiliations were often obscured by deceptive advertising practices that, along with overly long ballot descriptions, gave voters mixed signals about what the initiatives would do.

The study’s findings and recommendations parallel those of a review of the statewide initiative process released by the same group last year. The state Legislature responded by naming another citizens’ group to analyze the recommendations and conduct public hearings.

In its look at initiatives in the Los Angeles area, the commission expressed frustration with the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court has held that restrictions on initiative spending are an unconstitutional abridgment of freedom of speech.

The commission said that the alternative is “high-spending, one-sided campaigns (that) dominate and distort the electoral process.”

It noted that in smaller cities, grass-roots traditions persist, with volunteers gathering signatures to qualify initiatives for the ballot.

But in large cities, such work has been given over to professionals.

“For a hefty fee, political consultants plus a small army of paid (petition) circulators can ‘guarantee’ the qualification of almost any initiative,” the commission said. “For hundreds of thousands more, they will conduct a vigorous campaign for or against any initiative of their client’s choosing.”

They use tools such as slate mailers, whose publishers frequently mislead voters by pretending to represent the official endorsements of political parties, when what they actually do is sell space on their mailers to the highest bidder.

As an example of a large contribution in Los Angeles this year, the group cited mayoral candidate Richard Riordan’s donation of $453,000 of the $626,000 raised by Citizens for L.A. Term Limits to qualify a measure for next month’s city election.

In Los Angeles in 1986, slow-growth proponents won after both sides spent $370,000. But five years later, such amounts were peanuts.

In Burbank in 1991, NBC, Warner Bros., Walt Disney Co. and Lockheed spent more than $657,000 to defeat two slow-growth initiatives.

Heavy spending doesn’t always pay off. In Claremont in 1986, developer William (Buck) Jones spent $182,030 seeking voter approval of a pro-development initiative. Jones’ measure lost in a landslide.

In Los Angeles, Occidental Petroleum gave almost $8 million, or 99% of the money spent, on a citywide campaign to block an initiative placed on the ballot by anti-drilling forces and to pass a rival measure that would have allowed the drilling to proceed. Despite the huge outlay, the company lost on both fronts.

Of the $3.3 million spent by anti-drilling forces, the largest contributions came from state Controller Gray Davis, whose campaign committee provided $900,000; Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who donated $820,000; Hollywood investor A. Jerrold Perenchio, who gave $225,000, and Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, who contributed $194,300.

In Torrance, Mobil Oil spent more than $741,000 to defeat a 1990 ballot initiative that would have stopped it from using a highly toxic chemical at its refinery.

Formed in 1984, the California Commission on Campaign Financing is co-chaired by Cornell C. Maier, retired chairman of Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp.; Rocco C. Siciliano, retired chairman of Ticor, Los Angeles, and Francis M. Wheat, a former Securities and Exchange commissioner. The group’s professional staff is headed by Tracey Westen, a USC law professor, and Robert M. Stern, former general counsel to the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

The group suggests reforms requiring that:

* Proponents identify major contributors on signature petitions and in advertising.

* Local legislatures hold public hearings on initiatives and be allowed to amend them with proponents’ consent.

* Proponents be allowed to amend their initiatives to fix errors or omissions after public hearings, as long as the amendments do not betray the initiatives’ original intent.

* Legislators vote on any initiative that gets enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, and their votes be published in official ballot pamphlets as voter guides.

* Proponents limit the length of initiatives to 5,000 words.

* Authorities provide more succinct summaries of initiatives in voter pamphlets.

Times staff writers Jeffrey L. Rabin, Janet Rae-Dupree, Jocelyn Y. Stewart and Mike Ward contributed to this article.