SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — A last-minute ballot measure to reform a controversial crime law continued its march through the California Legislature on Tuesday as it passed out of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.
Senate Bill 1381 is expected to get a vote Wednesday on the Assembly floor before reaching the state Senate later that night.
Democrat state Senators Aisha Wahab of Hayward and Angelique Ashby of Sacramento wrote the bill to get a referendum on the November ballot to make changes to Proposition 47, the 10-year-old law that reduced penalties for certain property and drug crimes. Its critics point to it as a reason for the state’s retail theft crisis.
The measure would go head-to-head against a citizen-initiated ballot measure to repeal Proposition 47 altogether, which was certified last week to be included on the ballot.
Because Wahab and Ashby’s proposal is a legislative maneuver, it needs only a majority vote in both chambers to make the ballot, not the usual two-thirds.
“We are giving this back to the voters to decide,” Wahab told the public safety committee Tuesday.
The bill's authors say it's part of a comprehensive approach to tackling the problems of retail theft and fentanyl.
State retailer and grocer associations favor the lawmakers' initiative.
Groups aligned with sheriffs, district attorneys and defense attorneys opposed it.
Cory Salzillo, a lobbyist for the California State Sheriffs’ Association, pointed to a three-year limitation SB 1381 would place on the aggregation of thefts. That limitation could hinder prosecutors when building a case, he said, as they’d only have that three-year window to combine different thefts and increase a charge’s severity.
And Amy Bailey, a member of the California District Attorneys Association, pointed out that prosecutors under the proposed initiative would need to prove a dealer knew the substance they were selling was fentanyl — and the buyer must be unaware they are purchasing fentanyl.
Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, a West Hollywood Democrat, chairs the Assembly’s Select Committee on Retail Theft and co-authored the bill and said it was part of a package of crime bills moving through the Legislature. It holds thieves accountable, he said, with Ashby adding that it doesn’t reimpose harsh penalties for lesser thefts.
“We also care about not regressing back to mass incarceration and a failed war on drugs,” Ashby said.
Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Palmdale Republican, blasted the proposal. He said theft is rampant, pointing to some stores putting common products behind locked doors — a deterrent he claimed wasn't necessary before Proposition 47’s passage.
It was only after Democrats continued to argue that amending Proposition 47 wasn’t necessary, he said, that the Democratic supermajority created Senate Bill 1381.
“This is phony and it’s designed to cause confusion,” Lackey said.
The Democrats' initiative, if it gets more votes than the citizen-backed proposition, would make the latter null and void.
Ashby said her initiative is designed to offer a meaningful alternative to the citizen proposition and that the law shouldn’t allow prosecutors to imprison someone on a lengthy sentence for stealing a candy bar.
“It is very different than the initiative that has already qualified,” Ashby said.
In an unrelated vote, the Public Safety Committee on Tuesday passed SB 1414, written by state Senator Shannon Grove, a Bakersfield Republican, to the Appropriations Committee.
The original bill would have increased penalties for someone convicted of solicitation of a minor. However, the Senate Public Safety Committee made changes that the author said watered it down and required a higher threshold to convict someone of soliciting a minor.
“We’re leaving 16- and 17-year-olds out in the cold,” Grove said Tuesday. She pressed the committee to restore her proposal's original language.
Instead, the committee opted to include an amendment that allows for charging someone with a felony when they solicit someone under 18 years old who’s also a human trafficking victim.
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