Author: Ryan Byrne

In his State of the State address, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said the state’s high-speed rail project between San Francisco and Los Angeles “would cost too much and take too long.” Newsom said he wanted a portion of the high-speed rail, from Merced and Bakersfield, to be prioritized. The governor’s spokesperson Nathan Click later…

The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that a state law, passed as HB 2579 in 2016, violated the Voter Protection Act, Arizona’s restriction on legislative alteration. The Voter Protection Act requires voter approval of substantive changes made by the legislature to ballot initiatives. HB 2579 was designed to preempt local governments from requiring nonwage benefits…

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed legislation to increase the state’s minimum wage over five years, reaching $15 in 2024. Thereafter, the minimum wage will be tacked to increases in the Consumer Price Index. New Jersey is the fourth state, following California, Massachusetts, and New York, to enact $15 minimum wage legislation.  …

As of February 1, 2019, three citizen-initiated statewide ballot measures have qualified for the election on November 3, 2020, in California. The signature drives for the ballot initiatives cost between $2.05 million and $3.49 million.   Campaigns behind ballot initiatives often hire companies that specialize in signature drives to circulate petitions. Since Ballotpedia began tracking…

In 2020, voters across Missouri could decide a ballot initiative to consolidate St. Louis city and St. Louis County into a single political entity named The Metropolitan City of St. Louis. The new city would be the 10th largest city in the U.S., with a population around 1.3 million as of 2017. Residents of The…

Voters in Maine won’t decide any citizen-initiated statutes in 2019, making this year the first since 2013 to not feature initiated statutes. The deadline to file the 63,067 required signatures for citizen-initiated statutes was January 24, 2019. According to the secretary of state’s office, no signatures were filed for ballot initiatives.   There were three…

On January 22, 2019, an agreement was announced to end the six-day Los Angeles teachers’ strike. The agreement summary said the teachers’ union, school district, and Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) would endorse and advocate for a 2020 ballot initiative to amend California’s property tax structure.   The ballot initiative, which qualified for the election on…

In 2020, Californians will decide a veto referendum to repeal Senate Bill 10 (SB 10), which would make California the first state to end the use of cash bail for all detained suspects awaiting trials. Instead, SB 10 would institute a system of risk assessments to determine whether a detained suspect should be granted pretrial…

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (R) said that his office failed to report two constitutional amendments that the 86th Iowa General Assembly (2017-2018) approved in 2018.   The Iowa Constitution required Pate to publish notifications in two newspapers in each of Iowa’s four congressional districts at least three months before November 2018. Due to…