City Clerk Says LB Medpot Supporters Submitted Enough Signatures To Force City Hall's Hand: Councilmembers Must Now Either OK Costly Citywide Election (With Or Without City Hall Report On The Measure) OR Approve Petition-Initiated Medpot Measure As Submitted Bypassing Election/Voter Choice

LBReport.com

News

City Mgm't and Police Chief have previously warned resuming medpot operations will mean increased staff/police costs; measure's proponents say their measure includes tax to help pay for it

LBREPORT.com is reader and advertiser supported. Support independent news in LB similar to the way people support NPR and PBS stations. We're not non-profit so it's not tax deductible but $49.95 (less than an annual dollar a week) helps keep us online.

July 12 update: Council votes 9-0 to put the petition-initiated measure on the Nov. 2016 ballot and request city management report on its impacts.

(July 6, 2016) -- As previewed last month by LBREPORT.com, Long Beach taxpayers will now either have to pay the cost of a November special citywide election (consolidated with the November 2016 statewide election) to decide whether to let medical marijuana operations resume in Long Beach at a level not previously allowed here OR a Council majority could bypass the election cost and the voters' choice by approving the petition initiated measure's text outright.

City Clerk Maria de la Luz Garcia has announced that proponents of a Long Beach initiative ballot measure on the matter have filed a sufficient number of verified signatures to trigger the action. The petition contained 35,009 signatures; 24,909 valid signatures were required (10% of LB's total registered voters [249,089 as reported by L.A. County's Registrar Recorder on January 12, 2016]). A measure can qualify if a random sample of petition signatures (CA Elections Code section 9115(b)) projects 110% or greater of the required number of valid signatures; the measure needed at least 27,402 (110%) signatures; on a projected basis, the City Clerk determined 28,436 (114.16%) signatures were valid based on the random sample.

Under state law (CA Elections Code section 9215), the City Council must now take one of the following actions (within 10 days of the Clerk’s Certification of Sufficiency which was July 5).

(a) Adopt the proposed ordinance, without alteration;
(b) Submit the ordinance, without alteration, to the voters; or
(c) Order a report at the meeting at which the certification of the petition is presented. When the report is presented to the legislative body, the legislative body shall either adopt the ordinance within 10 days or order an election.

City management and LBPD's police chief have previously indicated that letting medpot operations resume will mean increased city staff and police costs...which initiative supporters say will be offset by a 6% tax on medpot operations included in their measure.

[Scroll down for further.]

In 2015, LB City Manager Pat West and LBPD Police Chief Robert Luna both publicly advised/cautioned/warned of fiscal costs and public safety resource issues if the Council were to lift LB's current ban and enact a new LB medpot ordinance. On December 8, Price cited the additional costs and resources and argued in favor of allowing "delivery only" operations while leaving a decision on resuming "storefront" operations for future Council action. Price's Dec. 2015 proposal narrowly passed 5-4 (Yes: Gonzalez, Price, Supernaw, Mungo, Austin; No: Lowenthal, Andrews, Uranga, Richardson) but when it returned to the Council for enacting votes, Councilman Richardson made a motion to "receive and file" it (take no action), seconded by Lowenthal, supported by Uranga, leaving LB's current ban on medical marijuana operations in place.

A few months ago, Price called the Council outcome take no action and let LB's ban continue "music to her ears"...but as a practical matter the action invited medpot supporters to do what they'd said they were prepared to do: mount a petition-initiative drive for a more sweeping ordinance...which they did.

Within days of medpot supporters submitting their petition initiative signatures to the City Clerk, Councilmembers Suzie Price, Stacy Mungo and Daryl Supernaw agendized a June 21 item that proposed a competing ballot measure that would allow delivery-only medpot perations. When the item reached the Council floor, Price ultimately made a substitute-substitute motion to seek a delay to July 5 for a City Attorney report, including on the impacts of the Nov. 2016 statewide measure that could allow recreational marijuana use. Mayor Garcia was absent for the entire Council meeting; Vice Mayor Lowenthal presided.

The Price/Mungo/Supernaw agendized item drew an embittered response from Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal along with less intense but bluntly stated displeasure from Councilman Rex Richardson. Without mentioning Price by name, Lowenthal said "fear mongering" had led to defeat of previous Council efforts to allow some LB medical marijuana operations, calling opposition actions now "disrespectful" of the public; Richardson called the June 21 agendized item "political grandstanding" that he didn't appreciate. Public speakers in opposition to the Price proposed action included Diana Lejins (a longtime advocate of marijuana for medicinal purposes) who argued that since Price is an OC Deputy DA (and the OC DA prosecutes marijuana cases), Price has a conflicting interest that should prompt her to recuse herself on the Council action.

Price's substitute-substitute motion went down to defeat 2-6 (Price and Mungo dissenting, Austin absent) with both Supernaw and Mungo joining the rest of the Council in voting to "receive and file" (motion by Uranga) Price's substitute-substitute (leaving Price alone in dissent 7-1, Austin absent).

Meanwhile, in early September 2015, the state legislature passed and Governor Brown signed into law legislation creating the "Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act" that creates a comprehensive statewide regulatory framework for cultivating, testing, distributing and taxing transactions involving medical cannabis and its related products. The statewide ordinance gives cities the choice of whether to ban or allow medical marijuana outlets within their city limits. A number of cities have disallowed medical marijuana operations.

Several years ago, a number of CA cities (including most OC cities) banned medpot operations within their city limits, but Long Beach's Council majority (like L.A.'s City Council) chose to try to regulate medpot operations locally. Then-Councilman (later Vice Mayor, now Mayor) Robert Garcia, and Councilwoman (now Vice Mayor) Suja Lowenthal urged Council enactment of a LB medical marijuana ordinance with Garcia saying he supports "safe access." Their position prevailed with a Council majority and an initial Long Beach Council ordinance ultimately consumed sizable taxpayer costs and city staff resources before an appellate court struck it down.

The Council (on then-City Attorney Bob Shannon's advice) then enacted the current ban on medpot operations until the CA Supreme Court ruled on what cities could and couldn't do. When the CA Supreme Court ruled that cities can decide whether to ban or allow medical marijuana operations within their borders, the LB Council created a citizen "task force" to discuss and make recommendations on what LB should do. The "task force" held multiple meetings; some medpot supporters criticized its proceedings as a "task farce"; the task force ultimately offered recommendations to the Council...and the Council ultimately went its own way, declining (as described above) to adopt any measure which begat the petition initiated measure now forcing the Council's hand.

Marijuana remains a designated [by Congress] as a federal Class 1 controlled drug...although the Obama administration's Justice Dept. has said it won't enforce some federal laws as long as they're consistent with state medical marijuana provisions and meet other DOJ requirements.

A previous LB City Council voted years ago to add a section to the City's federal legislative agenda [policies the City is supposed to be supporting/advocating] to "Support legislation to classify medical marijuana as a recognized pharmaceutical medication dispensed through pharmacies." It's unclear to what extent, if at all, the City and its DC lobbying efforts have done so or prioritized this.