Court Kicks Initiative Off Election Ballot

SACRAMENTO —  An initiative aimed at rolling back one of the vestiges of California’s disastrous experiment with energy deregulation was thrown off the November special election ballot Friday by a state appeals court.

The 3rd Appellate District Court of Appeal ruled that Proposition 80, if passed, would have been unconstitutional because it illegally impinged on the Legislature’s authority.

The judges said they saw “no value in allowing an invalid measure to be on the ballot ... to do so would be a disservice to the voters because it could unjustifiably divert attention, time and resources away from valid measures on the same ballot.”

The Proposition 80 ruling marked the second time in two days that a court booted a proposed initiative off the ballot of the coming special election called by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

On Thursday, a Sacramento Superior Court judge removed Proposition 77, a legislative reapportionment measure that was the centerpiece of the governor’s “Year of Reform” campaign. The judge nullified the initiative because wording on voter petitions had not been approved according to law.

The most important feature of Proposition 80 would have banned consumers who aren’t already doing so from buying their electricity from independent power producers. About 13% of the state’s electricity consumption comes from such competitive retail sales, which were a key component of the state’s failed effort at deregulating its power market.

However, Proposition 80 also contained a provision affecting the powers of the California Public Utilities Commission -- a role the court said was reserved for the Legislature by the state Constitution. Hence, the ballot initiative should have been submitted as a proposed constitutional amendment, the court said.

Putting a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot requires signatures from 598,105 registered voters. However, backers of Proposition 80 only turned in 373,816 signatures, enough to qualify an initiative aimed at changing a routine state law.

The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco-based ratepayers’ advocacy group known as TURN that backed Proposition 80, said it planned to ask the California Supreme Court to review the lower court’s published decision in hopes of getting the initiative back on the ballot in time for the election.

“We think the court made a mistake, and we think the people of California have every right to say never again to deregulation,” TURN spokeswoman Mindy Spatz said.

A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, a strong advocate of retail electricity competition, declined to comment on the judge’s decision.

Opponents of Proposition 80 welcomed the ruling, saying the initiative would have discouraged the construction of privately owned power plants in the state.

Power producers such as San Jose-based Calpine Corp. had argued that passage of Proposition 80 would have skewed the state’s energy market in favor of giant investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison, a unit of Rosemead-based Edison International Corp.

Removing Proposition 80 from the ballot “means that California will continue to have access to affordable, reliable and more renewable energy,” said Jan Smutny-Jones, executive director of the Independent Energy Producers Assn., which sued to remove the initiative from the ballot.