Suit’s Dismissal Clears Way for Bond Initiative

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit over an initiative to ease passage of local school bonds, clearing the way for an expensive effort to place the measure on the November ballot.

Backers of the initiative--a retooled version of the failed Proposition 26--hailed the decision this week to dismiss the lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

The initiative’s backers had blasted the suit as a stall tactic intended to keep the measure from qualifying for the ballot by delaying the circulation of petitions. The measure would reduce the vote needed to pass local school construction bonds from the current two-thirds majority to 55%.

Bill Hauck of the California Business Roundtable said the lawsuit was “exposed as a frivolous, meritless action by a group working to keep hidden the true merits of the issue.”

Hauck and his counterparts face a May 5 deadline to collect 1 million signatures. They had gathered 200,000 Monday.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. had sued over the wording of the initiative’s summary and title, arguing that the summary was misleading because it omitted the word “voter” from a key phrase.

The group noted that Proposition 26, which was rejected in March, stated in its summary that local school bonds could be passed with majority “voter” approval. The word “voter” was not included in a similar phrase in the summary of the new initiative, they argued.

“We’re disappointed. . . . We thought it was a fatal omission,” said Jon Coupal, of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.