Environmental advocates in California are launching a campaign to ask voters to ban new oil and gas wells near homes, schools and hospitals.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law last year that banned new gas and oil wells within 3,200 feet of sensitive areas.FILE - A pump jack extracts oil at a drilling site next to homes June 9, 2021, in Signal Hill, Calif.California voters may be asked twice on the same November 2024 ballot whether to keep or to ditch a law mandating new oil wells be a certain distance away from homes, schools and parks.
But on Wednesday, environmental advocates put forward their own proposed ballot measure aimed at getting voters to require buffer zones. Outside California, nearly half of U.S. states have a process allowing voters to reject policies that state legislators have passed. The Legislature is weighing whether to change the referendum process, so Californians don't get confused about whether they're voting to uphold or to overturn a law. The legislation would have voters decide to either "keep the law" or to "overturn the law." That would mean a departure from a "yes" vote to keep the law or a "no" vote to overturn it.
Ballot measures in California typically need support from more than 50% of the vote to pass. If there are two conflicting measures that meet that threshold, the one that got the most votes would prevail, said Bob Stern, former president of the nonprofit Center for Governmental Studies. But Stern said he's never heard of a referendum and a competing measure appearing on the same ballot in California.
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