The Brief

Vote centers are open in the recall election of Santa Ana City Councilmember Jessie Lopez, but it's unclear whether the election is legal.

That's because the Orange County registrar of voters recently concluded the city was using the wrong district boundaries and the wrong population data to calculate how many signatures were needed to trigger the recall and who should get to vote.

As a result, nearly 1,200 voters who, according to O.C. Registrar Bob Page's recent calculations, should be able to vote in the Nov. 14 election did not get ballots.

Using the correct district boundaries, Page also calculated that the initial recall petition actually fell short of the number required to hold an election by 230 signatures. Last week, Page rescinded his initial verification that recall petitioners had met the signature threshold.

On Friday, Guadalupe Ocampo, one of Lopez's constituents, filed a legal challenge asking a judge to immediately stop the election. Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin was set to hear the case Tuesday morning. (Read the complaint.)

Here's the story behind the recall snafu and what election experts say could happen now.

Why was Lopez targeted for recall in the first place?

Recall backers, primarily the Santa Ana Police Officers Association and several real estate groups, want Lopez off the council because of her support for policies they say have pushed up housing costs, and reduced support for police.

Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez was elected in 2020 to represent the city district called Ward 3.

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LAist reached out to the police officers association and to Tim Rush, a real estate executive who chairs the recall campaign, but has not gotten a response.

In a February op-ed in the Orange County Register, Rush cited Lopez and fellow councilmember Thai Viet Phan's "palpable hostility to law enforcement," including voting to reduce the police force budget and voting to end a ban on street cruising, as reasons for the recall.

Rush also cited their votes to enact what he called "the most radical city rent control measure in California." (The campaign failed to turn in enough signatures to trigger a recall election for Phan.)

Santa Ana is the only city in Orange County where elected officials have passed a rent control ordinance. Its policy restricts rent increases to 2.54% through the end of August 2024. A handful of cities in L.A. County cap rent increases under 3%. For example, West Hollywood’s cap is 2.5% through the end of August 2024 and rent controlled housing in the city of L.A. is currently under a rent freeze that prohibits rent increases in most cases.

Lopez's supporters say her actions on the city council have led to more police oversight and helped low-income residents fight unjust evictions and steep rent hikes.

"It really is about losing the gains that the community has made if this recall were to be successful," said Hairo Cortes, executive director of the Latinx youth advocacy group Chispa.

Experts say California election law is confusing

LAist spoke with six outside election experts to get their opinions on the Santa Ana recall snafu, two of them county registrars of voters.

They told us:

• Page, the O.C. registrar of voters, is right — there is a fundamental error in the Lopez recall election. The wrong district boundaries were used to calculate the number of signatures needed to trigger the recall and to determine who gets to vote.  
• Nevertheless, California election law isn't exactly straightforward on the subject. 

"I can certainly understand how mistakes are made because the law is not at all clear," said Douglas Johnson, president of National Demographics Corporation, a company that assists local governments with redistricting.

The experts consulted by LAist agreed that California law and court precedent have established that elected officers are to represent the population that initially voted them into office — and that the same population should get to decide whether to remove their representative from office.

That means, in the case of Santa Ana, that the district as it existed when Lopez was elected in 2020 should get to vote on whether to recall her. But recall proponents would need a thorough understanding of California election law to catch this nuance, experts said.

"The fact that the answer is clear doesn't mean that the question comes up often enough for it to be on the top of everybody's mind," said Fredric Woocher, a Los Angeles-based election lawyer.

First off, redistricting only happens every 10 years after the Census.

Second, questions about how many signatures are needed to trigger a recall and who gets to vote only matter if the official subject to recall was elected to represent a specific geographic district rather than at-large. A little less than half of all cities in California vote by district, according to Johnson.

And third, the window for recalling an elected official after redistricting is pretty small. After the 2020 Census, most jurisdictions in California didn't finalize their new district maps until late 2021 or early-to-mid 2022. Santa Ana officially adopted its new districts, which it calls wards, in April 2022. That doesn't leave much time to mount a recall campaign and bring it to voters before elected officials' terms are up.

According to the website Ballotpedia, just two recalls made it to the ballot in California in 2023: the Lopez recall and the recall of former Councilmember Catherine Alvarez in Downey. Alvarez was ousted by voters in February and ballots for a special election to choose her replacement are due Tuesday.

Downey city clerk Maria Alicia Duarte told LAist there was no question that the recall would be up to voters in the district that originally elected Duarte in 2020. The city has made clear that the new boundaries for the district formerly represented by Alvarez won't go into effect until the November 2024 general election.

What state election law says, and doesn't say

When Santa Ana adopted its new district boundaries, the city council passed an ordinance stating the new boundaries would go into effect starting with the November 2022 general election "and subsequent elections thereafter."

But that seems to contradict state law. California election code states that new city council districts will take effect at the first election following adoption of the new boundaries, "excluding a special election to fill a vacancy or a recall election."

Johnson noted that the "excluding" subclause is key but easily ignored.

"It's only a couple of throwaway words, but they have huge impact," he said.

The California Secretary of State's 2023 recall procedures guide says nothing specifically about how to handle a recall election after redistricting.

Johnson and Woocher said court precedent is much more decisive on the matter. Woocher noted a 2021 opinion from the California attorney general regarding a special election held after a San Luis Obispo County supervisor died during his term in office. The state attorney general determined that the district boundaries in place when the supervisor was elected, in 2020, should apply to the special election to fill his seat.

In a letter to Santa Ana's City Clerk advising her of the mistaken boundaries in Lopez's recall election, Page cited a different attorney general opinion from 2014. That opinion suggested that a city council member was unlawfully appointed to serve out the term of his predecessor who resigned because the new member didn't reside within the city council district boundaries that existed when the incumbent was elected.

Whose fault is the mistake in Santa Ana?

Page told LAist he recognized there was a problem with the Lopez recall when a fellow registrar, Lupe Villa in the Central Valley's Kings County, emailed his counterparts on Oct. 25 to ask for advice on a school board recall. There, a group is seeking to recall all five board members of the Reef-Sunset Unified School District, three of whom were elected in 2020 before redistricting and two of whom were elected in 2022 after redistricting.

The question caused Page to re-examine how his office reviewed the recall petition for Lopez and is administering the recall election, Page told LAst in an email. He realized the city had incorrectly used post-redistricting population numbers to calculate the number of voter signatures needed to trigger the recall — 26,370 voters instead of the correct number, 27,158.

Using the correct, pre-redistricting boundaries and population, Page found that signature gatherers actually fell short of the amount needed to trigger an election — by 230 signatures. He contacted Hall, the city clerk, on Oct. 26 to tell her and ask how the city wanted to proceed.

Hall did not respond to LAist’s request for comment.

The Orange County Registrar of Voters administers elections at the request of cities. But city clerks are officially in charge of municipal elections. "The city tells the county what they want to have done," said Woocher, the election lawyer.

So who's fault is the Santa Ana mistake? Woocher said "everybody has the responsibility to provide correct information."

Johnson added that this responsibility starts with the recall proponents. "California election law is very clear that it is the people who are circulating the petitions' responsibility to get the rules right," he said. "Even if someone tells them the wrong information, that's not an excuse."

What's less clear, Johnson reiterated, is what election law says about how to handle snafus like the one in Santa Ana.

"Running an elections office is so complicated," he said. "In defense of the county registrar and the Santa Ana folks, the only way anyone learns this stuff is by running into it, unfortunately."

What happens with the election?

At a special meeting last week, the Santa Ana City Council deadlocked 3-3 on whether to take action to cancel the election or let it proceed. (Lopez recused herself from the vote.) That means it is continuing as planned, according to city officials and Page, the registrar. The last day of voting is scheduled for Nov. 14.

For voters, this means unless the recall ends up in court and a judge intervenes, votes will be counted later this month.

In a Facebook post following the vote, Santa Ana Councilmember David Peñaloza said he was rescinding his endorsement of the recall campaign given the unresolved legal questions. He said a judge should decide whether the election can lawfully go forward.

"The integrity of our elections is way too important and sacred for politicians to be the ones who decide whether an election currently taking place gets canceled or not, especially after many Santa Ana residents have already cast their votes," he wrote.

Lopez advised supporters, in a recent fundraising email, that she plans on "taking this corrupt recall to court." LAist reached out to Lopez via phone and email, but did not receive a response.

Woocher said Lopez isn't the only one who could challenge the election — the registrar has identified more than 1,000 voters who lived in Lopez's district when she was elected and therefore should be able to vote in her recall, but weren't mailed ballots.

"If you are one of the people who should be able to vote, you would certainly have standing to complain about it," he said.

Ocampo, the voter who is asking the court to stop the election, had another request in her court filing. If the judge won't stop the election, she asked that he allow voters in Lopez's district as it was when she was elected to cast ballots.

Malibu is pushing back the next phase of its speed camera program along a deadly stretch of PCH to November. The 60-day warning period was originally set to start in November, where drivers going 11 or more miles per hour over the speed limit will get a warning instead of a fine.

The delay, the city says, is needed so adjustments can be made to camera installations.

Yesterday, a Nobu worker was killed about a block from the upscale Japanese restaurant on PCH. CBS LA reports that a juvenile had crashed into the employee's parked vehicle.

When fines start

Malibu officials announced the delay of the program's warning phase last week after a testing period in September recorded around 100,000 speeding violations in less than 10 days.

Enforcement at the 10 cameras along a 21-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway will start sometime after the end of the warning period. According to the city, violations will result in fines, but not driver’s license points or insurance penalties.

Why Malibu added speed cameras

Since 2010, traffic collisions on that part of PCH have killed more than 60 people, the city says. In 2023 alone, there were 220 reported crashes there, with 93 injuries and seven deaths — including four Pepperdine University students who were standing along PCH when a driver hit and killed them. The driver, who is charged with murder, is scheduled to stand trial beginning Dec. 1.

Following that incident, Malibu City Council declared a local emergency over dangerous conditions posed by reckless and speeding drivers.

In 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 1297 into law to allow Malibu to install the speed cameras

Looking to say adios to your lawn by sheet mulching or to add a protective layer to your flower beds? Good news, you don’t need to pay for mulch or woodchips. You can instead get them for free in Southern California. Here are a few different ways, depending on your flexibility - and muscle power.

Free mulch piles

Municipalities across the region offer free mulch.

City of L.A.: You can grab mulch anytime from one of its free mulch piles.

O.C.: You can schedule a pickup from a greenery/landfill

Other cities: see below (or check out your own city government’s page).

• Riverside County Department of Waste Resources 
• City of Rialto Free Compost & Mulch 
• Burrtec's Coachella Valley Composting Facility. It is located at 87011 Landfill Rd in Coachella. 
• City of Rancho Mirage Free Compost and Mulch Program 
• City of Ventura Free Compost and Mulch Program

Free mulch delivery

If you don’t want to go pick up the free mulch yourself, consider ChipDrop. It’s a service that connects arborists with gardeners to deliver free wood chips.

Beware: you may get a lot of mulch. Like, a lot.

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Jenn Baughman

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Connect with an arborist:

If you want to try to control the amount of mulch you get - or the date of delivery - you may want to consider talking to an individual arborist. They often end up with excess woodchips they need to get rid of, or take to the dump. If you call they might be happy to offload some for your garden.

Opponents of Proposition 40 have a message for voters: Don’t be fooled. The billionaire tax is a “Trojan horse” for new taxes on all Californians, ads proclaim. But is that true?

Tucked into the initiative is language granting the Legislature authority to amend the tax by a two-thirds vote “if the statute is consistent with and furthers the purposes of the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.” Opponents argue lawmakers and a future governor could, with the stroke of a pen, expand the wealth tax to people with far less than $1 billion.

In a high-tax state, that argument could hold a lot of sway with voters.

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West put Prop. 40 on the ballot; the initiative would levy a one-time, 5% tax on billionaire’s assets. The union rejects the premise of the ad. It says the tax is limited to billionaires and any legislative amendment would have to hew closely to that purpose. Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW, said opponents’ ads are pure scare tactics.

“The billionaire tax is a tax on billionaires. Period. If you’re not a billionaire, you don’t pay the tax,” Regan said in a statement to CalMatters.

Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, the group that paid for the ad, said the message was meant to highlight the policy implications of a wealth tax and the power Prop. 40 gives lawmakers.

“Californians deserve to understand those issues and what they could mean for taxpayers and the state’s economy,” Lapsley said in a statement.

A separate, billionaire-backed group opposed to Prop. 40 has also said the initiative “gives politicians the power to expand the tax to anyone.”

The truth lies somewhere in between.

California courts have given lawmakers real authority to amend laws created by ballot initiatives if the original text of the initiative permits it. However, that power is not unlimited and the measure includes language restricting future legislative changes, said Michael Colantuono, an attorney with expertise in state election law.

Opponents’ ads also don’t mention that Prop. 40 writes the tax into the state Constitution, not just state law, so expanding it would likely require another trip to the ballot.

Legislative authority

Legal experts agree that if Prop. 40 passes, lawmakers would be able to make certain amendments without taking it back to voters.

The state Constitution allows the Legislature to amend a ballot initiative without another vote if the initiative permits it. That’s a relatively common clause in ballot measures, and Prop. 40 includes it.

Megan Jones, a tax attorney at Holland & Knight, said proponents’ claims that the tax could never be changed are disingenuous.

“If it’s going to further the purposes, then they could,” Jones said.

For example, voters passed the Political Reform Act, which governs campaign finance and lobbying rules, in 1974 and lawmakers have amended it almost continually since.

Similarly, lawmakers have amended the Mental Health Services Act, a voter-approved 1% income tax on millionaires, 10 times since its passage in 2004. None of those amendments adjusted the tax rate. Most recently, lawmakers voted to substantially alter how the state spends mental health money and raise additional bond funds. Those changes went back to voters in 2024 as Proposition 1.

But there isn’t always a clear line for when voters need to approve changes, experts say.

“It is common for the Legislature to make amendments,” Colantuono said. “It is (also) common for there to be disputes about those amendments.”

‘Furthers the purposes of’

“Ultimately, it ends up in court,” said Chris Parker, a principal tax attorney at the firm Baker Tilly.

The California Supreme Court ruled in a 1995 case that the Legislature may amend voter-approved laws if the changes can be interpreted as furthering voters’ original goals “by any reasonable construction” — giving lawmakers broad latitude.

In 2021, the state Supreme Court held that the Legislature appropriately amended Proposition 57, a criminal justice reform measure, by barring the transferring of minors under 16 to adult court. Justices cited the 1995 case, noting that “a strong presumption of constitutionality supports the Legislature’s acts.”

Still, the language of the proposition matters.

A few years earlier, in 2019, the Third District Court of Appeal held that a legislative attempt to allow public funding of political campaigns “directly conflicts with a primary purpose” of the Political Reform Act. Lawmakers responded by passing a new bill asking voters to weigh in directly — it appears on this year’s ballot as Proposition 4.

Judges look at two things, Coluantuono said: what reasonable voters thought they were approving, and whether later legislative changes helped that goal, or got in the way.

Certain provisions of Prop. 40 would make it difficult for lawmakers to expand the tax beyond billionaires. The 1995 case established that courts may weigh the language of a ballot measure, arguments printed in the voter guide, and historical context when deciding whether change is consistent with voter intent.

Prop. 40’s purpose and intent section says the measure is meant to support healthcare and education “by raising revenue from a one-time tax on billionaire wealth” — referencing billionaire wealth three times. The voter guide arguments similarly target “approximately 200 California billionaires.”

“They could probably adjust the structure of the tax in marginal ways, but what they couldn’t do is make it a more than a one-time tax, and they probably couldn’t lower the threshold on wealth,” Coluantuono said.

Opponents contend lawmakers could interpret the purpose of the act far more broadly, and a court would agree. They point to the first listed purpose of the initiative that says the tax is meant to “protect access to high quality, equitable health care, and to support funding for kindergarten through grade fourteen public education and food assistance programs.” Opponents also say the proposal gives the Legislature the authority to change all parts of the initiative, including the constitutional provisions.

“Prop 40’s findings and statement of purpose and intent were carefully crafted to ensure that

extending the tax to non-billionaires would be consistent with the measure,” said Kurt Oneto, a lawyer for the No on 40 campaign, in a statement.

Experts said the question would likely come down to how a court read the act’s purposes.

A separate concern: how do you prove wealth? 

Should Prop. 40 pass, it would create an entirely new tax structure in California — one that assigns a value to very wealthy people’s investments, public and private businesses, as well as personal property such as art or car collections.

Valuing something like a tech startup that hasn’t produced a product or gone public could prove especially difficult, Parker said.

“The excise tax that’s being proposed here is on potential,” he said. “The question then is, if we open the door to taxing potential, when does that stop?”

Lawmakers have periodically tried to pass wealth taxes, but the bills quickly stalled. This marks the first time voters will directly decide on one, making Prop. 40 a crucial test of how much appetite Californians have for his kind of tax structure. Jones said the bigger worry isn’t the tax itself, but other taxes that could follow.

“It’s a slippery slope,” she said.

Coluantuono said it would still be politically risky for lawmakers to try to implement a wealth tax on everyday Californians, but history shows temporary taxes have more than once become permanent.

“When we get a revenue stream in the government and we start spending it on services that people value… there’s tremendous political pressure to prevent the sunset,” he said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, appeared at a South L.A. forum Saturday, where they agreed on some aspects of the city’s approach to reducing homelessness, but offered different ideas on addressing housing costs.

The two appeared separately in conversations with Brenda Verano of CALO News at A Place Called Home, a youth services community organization.

Bass went first, saying she grew up just 20 blocks south of the venue.

“South L.A. has been a big part of my life and what I have done,” said Bass, who in 1991 helped start Community Coalition, which fights for racial and economic justice in that part of the city.

Each candidate was asked how they would build trust in City Hall among Black and Latino residents in South L.A.

“Black and brown poor folks the most have been central in my administration and will continue to be so,” Bass said. “But to me, representation is not just about faces in a room. It's about collaborating on everything you're doing.”

Raman said the establishment “has taken the people of Los Angeles for granted.”

“I’m running for mayor because I don’t want to ignore any part of this city,” she said. “I want to make sure we are people who know these communities not just in the mayor's office but across the many commissions, across the many departments that are designed to oversee these neighborhoods.”

How the candidates would work with LAPD 

Both vowed to expand pilot programs where unarmed social workers respond to certain non-emergency 911 calls instead of the police department.

“Law enforcement should not be dealing with homelessness and substance abuse and mental health,” Bass said. “Those are public health issues.”

But Bass said it's doubtful the police department’s budget will be cut before the 2028 Olympics. The mayor in the past has expressed support for growing the number of police officers.

Raman has said the department is about the right size. She expressed concern about the police department’s cooperation with ICE during recent federal immigration raids.

Raman also criticized the department for its crowd control tactics during protests around ICE facilities. Police used tear gas and rubber bullets against some protestors.

“This mayor did not speak out against those actions by LAPD, appointed a chief who has not met this moment, who said he would not enforce laws put in by the state to protect us,” Raman said.

Chief Jim McDonnell has previously said his department would not enforce California's state law banning federal immigration and law enforcement agents from wearing masks on duty. A federal appeals court in February blocked enforcement of the law.

Bass said if the judicial ban is lifted, she would order McDonnell to enforce the state law. The mayor also defended the department’s use of police officers for crowd control during ICE operations.

“If there is a crowd around an arrest, then LAPD is involved because we don’t want to have the federal government doing that,” she said.

Both say city should exit troubled homelessness agency

On the city’s response to homelessness, Bass called the current system “completely disfunctional” and called for a new system under the control of the city.

Currently, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority oversees the city’s delivery of homeless services. Numerous audits have found poor accounting of taxpayer money at the agency — which spent nearly $830 million in public funds last fiscal year.

The county has already pulled its funding from the agency in favor of standing up a new county-run Department of Homeless Services and Housing.

Bass said unhoused people are not getting enough care once they leave the streets.

“It is insufficient. They are not taken care of in terms of their health, education, etc. A new system would enable us to do that,” Bass said.

Raman has said she also supports leaving LAHSA and investing in a new homelessness bureau. She noted that street homelessness fell in her council district while numbers across the city went up, according to this year’s homeless count.

“In the past few years, this mayor has refused to audit our homelessness response,” Raman said. “I am very committed to doing that, and I'll request that audit on day one.”

Sharp divides on housing development, renter protections

On housing, Raman criticized the mayor’s opposition to building more densely in residential neighborhoods near transit centers. She said the result has been more building in the city’s poorer council districts, including the South L.A. district that hosted Saturday’s forum.

“Wealthier neighborhoods, less diverse neighborhoods, whiter neighborhoods have actually pushed back on affordable housing, on greater density,” Raman said.

More of the city, said Raman, should bear the burden of greater density.

“We need to build more housing in Los Angeles, but we need to build it across every single neighborhood,” Raman added.

Bass has said density doesn’t belong in some neighborhoods. She opposed a state law, SB 79, that will force cities to allow apartment buildings up to nine stories tall near rail transit stations.

Bass said her administration has fast-tracked new income-restricted housing. But she argued that certain development restrictions are necessary to prevent gentrification.

“We need housing, but we cannot displace Black and Brown people,” Bass said. “If you have housing that is just built anywhere and everywhere, they're coming for us.”

Raman also criticized Bass’ move to temporarily lift restrictions on short-term rentals in preparation for an influx of visitors during the 2028 Olympics.

“I want to make sure that this mayor’s push for deregulating short-term rental during this time, in ways that are harmful to renters, don’t go through,” Raman said. She said tenants could be displaced as landlords turn long-term rentals into short-term accommodations.

Airbnb and business groups back the proposal, saying it will fill a visitor lodging gap for the Olympics and that it would generate significant municipal revenue. Airbnb has put more than $4 million toward backing Bass and three other city candidates, according to the latest campaign finance reports.