Breaking: Democrats to Pull Urgency Clauses and ‘Poison Pills’ Out of Retail Theft Bill Package

The Globe learned late Saturday that Democrats in the California Legislature are going to pull the urgency clauses and poison pills out of all the “Safer CA” bills – the package of retail theft bills they’ve been pushing through, rather than supporting the statewide effort to reform Proposition 47.

I spoke with a Senior Republican Senate Staffer who requested anonymity, and said, “A rookie pro-Tem and greenhorn Speaker – they’re in as much a panic mode over the repeal Prop. 47 initiative as their national counterparts are over repealing Biden.”

We are talking about the ballot initiative to reform the 2014 Proposition 47, which qualified with 900,000 signatures for the November ballot. Democrats in the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom are apparently compelled to oppose it, despite the important legal fixes to California’s outrageous crime problems.

As we have reported, Democrats have had 10-years since the passage of Proposition 47 to legally address the crimes Prop. 47 turned into misdemeanors from felonies, and ushered in a decade of serial retail theft, homelessness, drug trafficking, sex crimes, sex trafficking and other violent and terrible crimes. And every legislative attempt was summarily killed or never even given a hearing.

Rather than supporting the qualified ballot initiative, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrat lawmakers rushed a package of retail theft bills through to mislead voters, adding in “poison pill” amendment provisions to provide that the bills would be repealed if the Fix Prop. 47 initiative is approved by voters in November.

But this competing effort hasn’t gone over well at all, and now appears to have been a total dud.

San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow has been deeply involved in the reform Prop. 47 effort, and told the Globe Sunday morning:

“If they remove the poison pill language from their bills, that means that we have been successful.

It also means that the leadership in the California State Legislature has finally acknowledged what has been obvious to the rest of us: that Prop. 47 was dangerous, it was too soft on crime, and that the voters want it to be reformed.

The voters will be heard loud and clear in November when they pass the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act of 2024.”

The effort to reform or “Fix Prop. 47” initiative is a truly populist initiative, bipartisan, and as important an initiative as it gets because of the escalating crime across the state. The Fix Prop 47 initiative will make crime illegal again in California – something most people never thought would be necessary. But the Democrat supermajority has thwarted every attempt to reform even small parts of the 2014 initiative.

DA Dow warned last week to keep an eye on the Governors office, which appears to be focused on bringing another voter initiative to the floor of the Senate or Assembly. “This initiative, if they vote to put it on the ballot will be soft on crime and it is designed to compete and take voters away from the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act of 2024 that has broad bipartisan support.”

How silly and petty fighting over how Prop. 47 is reformed, rather than agreeing that the already qualified initiative will be best for all of California.