How to Fix the Problems With Prop 37 Without Another Initiative Battle

By
Greg Diamond
– November 11, 2012Posted in: "The OC", Fresh Juice
Senate Majority Leader Steinberg, Governor Brown, Speaker Perez as tomatoes

Something unusual has gotten into our produce — but California Dems like Senate Majority Leader Darrell Steinberg, Governor Jerry Brown, and Assembly Speaker John Perez can now act to fix the problem the right way!

The ostensible argument against Prop 37, which would have required labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), was that it was not well written.  (Funny, that didn’t seem to hurt Prop 35!  It’s a wonder what a couple of million dollars of advantage in spending will do.)  This led not only to confident although general disparaging statements all over television from people in lab coats, but allegedly to strange and unwanted outcomes such as treating the same food item separately when sold to consumers for home use versus at a restaurant.  (Yeah — because we’re currently all in the restaurant kitchen looking at the ingredient labels.)

Prop 37 was a home-cooked initiative — initially the inspiration of a single activist, Chico grandmother Pam Larry — that caught fire, went viral (so to speak — GMO joke there), and required about $50 million from Monsanto and its friends to destroy in a smear campaign.  (As noted in this constructive critique of the initiative effort by Jonathan Greenberg, which I suggest that people read despite my still thinking through what parts of it I might want to quibble with, to avoid turning off the voting public they chose to avoid the underlying and more pressing question of whether this stuff was likely to kill you.)

The nice thing about the just-ended campaign, which ended in Prop 37’s narrow defeat, is that it was generally fought on grounds that did not deny the legitimacy of consumers’ desire to know what was going into their food — if it could be done correctly.  Beyond the bogus “food will cost everyone $400 per year” claim, for the most part the No on 37 campaign would leave one thinking that the proposition as written was simply a bad means to a reasonable end.

Great!  That means that there’s an alternative route to getting it approved: instead of going through the initiative process in 2014, proponents can, in 2013, try to get it passed through the legislature.

Among the things that such a path would do is to get the professionals involved — the legislative analysts and drafters who could come up with something that would be much harder for opponents to attack.  It would also mean legislative hearings into GMOs — also probably a winner for Democrats who are proponents of labeling.  It would infuriate Monsanto, of course — but that’s the sort of thing that can backfire on them.  After all, if the legislature does pass such a bill, their best bet would be to try to undo it — or at least stall it — with a referendum; once the weight of the legislature is behind the bill, they’d need a lot of good will to make that work.

It looks like Democrats will have a healthy majority in the Assembly and Senate next year.  Not all of those Democrats are particularly great Democrats — but enough of them may well be.  If we have a majority like that, isn’t it time to use it?

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)