California Focus
There’s something nearly missing from this fall’s general election ballot, a seeming staple of every November vote of the last dozen years: This ballot contains just one referendum, an attempt by tobacco companies to cancel a 2020 state law banning flavored tobacco.
But not to worry. More referenda are coming up in 2024, and with plenty of money behind at least one of them.
Referenda are attempts to cancel laws passed by the state Legislature; two originally planned for this fall fizzled when sponsors realized they could not gather enough petition signatures to win a shot at a popular vote.
Backers of the effort to repeal the 2021 laws best known as SB 9 and SB 10, which effectively ended single family (R-1) zoning in California, say they’ll be back next year with a new drive to kill the two laws. The measures also allow replacement of single homes with as many as six new dwelling units each.
The success of that drive is uncertain at best, given the sponsors’ failure last year.
No such uncertainty afflicts the effort by Burger King, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out Burgers, Jack in the Box and others to kill a newly-signed law raising the minimum wage for fast-food franchise workers to as much as $22 per hour next year. The same law also sets up a new state-operated council to regulate working conditions in the fast food industry.
Known in the Legislature as AB 257, this law barely passed the state Senate, but Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it with a big grin on Labor Day....
You are reading the second issue of the Disinformation Monitor. It is published on a monthly basis and provides an overview of developments on the disinformation scenes on NATO’s eastern frontier....