By Nadia Lopez | Bloomberg

It took less than 90 days for the oil and gas lobby to blow up one of Gavin Newsom’s major achievements.

The California governor signed a bill to great fanfare in September to block new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools and hospitals, cementing an effort that took decades for environmentalists to push through against business and union interests.

But that’s when the California Independent Petroleum Association went to work. Representing 300 oil and gas producers, the organization quickly raised $21 million to recruit people to collect signatures — at shopping malls, farmers’ markets and grocery stores — and get enough support to put the issue to voters.

The petitioners obtained 687,058 valid names, surpassing the threshold needed to put Senate Bill 1137 to a referendum in 2024 and placing Newsom’s new law on hold. The price tag for the industry: about $20 per signature.

Now that effort is sparking backlash, not only from Newsom, a Democrat who slammed “greedy” oil companies, but from lawmakers in Sacramento. Isaac Bryan, a recently elected member of the California Assembly, is trying to make it harder for groups to use referendums to repeal laws that they dislike.

Bryan this year introduced Assembly Bill 421 to end the practice of paying petitioners per signature — referred within political circles as “bounty hunting.” His bill would require political campaigns to obtain 5% of all signatures from unpaid volunteers or via...

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