That leaves open the possibility that the county could put forward an alternative proposal that would appear on the June ballot alongside a proposed medical marijuana cultivation initiative that’s aimed to go before voters at that time. However, based on the Tuesday discussion, the board didn’t appear to favor offering another document to voters.
The Lake County Citizens for Responsible Regulations and Lake County Green Farmers Association submitted the signature petitions for the referendum in November, the month after the board approved Ordinance No. 2960 to regulate medical marijuana cultivation.
The groups last month also submitted signatures for their proposed initiative, titled “Lake County Medical Marijuana Cultivation Act of 2012.”
Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley, who took the referendum to the board on Tuesday, said her staff is in the process of verifying that the groups’ proposed ballot initiative also has the required 2,115 signatures – which equals 10 percent of the entire vote cast within Lake County for all candidates for governor during the November 2010 election – to qualify.
Meanwhile, the referendum effort provided sufficient signatures, and Fridley said the board had the option of rescinding Ordinance No. 2960 altogether or placing it on the June 5 ballot.
Alternately, Fridley said the board could present the ordinance to the county’s voters in a special election before June.
Supervisor Anthony Farrington said he had a conversation with Cynara Velazquez, a political consultant hired by the Lake County Citizens for Responsible Regulations to work on their referendum and initiative, and she told him that the October decision in Pack v. City of Long Beach would run counter to the county’s ordinance.
That decision, reached by the state’s Second Appellate District Court, found that Long Beach’s comprehensive regulatory scheme to govern medical marijuana collectives – including charging application fees and issuing a limited number of permits – was preempted by federal law. In essence, local jurisdictions cannot regulate any uses of what the federal government considers an illegal drug.
County Counsel Anita Grant said that decision is up for appeal.
While Farrington wanted to discuss the decision’s legal impacts on the county’s ordinance, Grant counseled against it, warning that to do so would be “seriously off course” of what was on the agenda and therefore a Brown Act violation.
Farrington said the Pack decision would affect his deliberations in making a decision. Grant said the matter is in limbo.
“This is nothing new, that things are put on the ballot that could eventually be challenged and overturned,” said Brown, adding that allowing the referendum to move forward to the ballot showed neither opposition nor endorsement on the board’s part.
He said when they passed the ordinance the federal government wasn’t nearly as aggressive as it’s become in recent months over medical marijuana-related matters in California. “So who knows what’s going to happen.”
Supervisor Jeff Smith suggested repealing the county’s ordinance, as he was concerned that there might be aspects to it that would now be illegal in light of the Pack v. Long Beach decision.
He said he thought they had come up with something good, “a compromise, that we worked really hard on.”
Smith added, “I think we need to honor what’s before us” and rescind Ordinance No. 2960.
Supervisor Denise Rushing pointed out that the board had voted 5-0 on the ordinance, which she said she didn’t feel went far enough to address environmental concerns.
“There are people who don’t like it the way it is,” she said, explaining that voters could be confused by having to consider the county ordinance and the initiative. “My tendency would be to let the voters decide.”
Supervisor Jim Comstock asked Fridley how it would be decided which approach – ordinance or initiative – would win on the ballot. Fridley said it was a straightforward matter of whichever received the most votes.
Smith asked if the county was going to campaign for its ordinance. “We can’t,” replied Brown.
Fridley said the sample ballot would include an impartial analysis of the measures written by the county counsel, as well as arguments for and against the measures provided by different parties.
Brown said he didn’t feel there should be two such items on the ballot. “It shouldn’t be decided based on confusion.”
During public comment, Don Merrill, spokesman for the Lake County Citizens for Responsible Regulations and Lake County Green Farmers Association, asked the board to rescind its ordinance and adopt the groups’ initiative.
“You potentially could have in place by March a ordinance in Lake County,” he said, one that would have room for fee modification and addressing environmental impacts.
“We did not do this to be adversaries with you folks,” he said.
Lower Lake attorney Ron Green also urged the board to rescind Ordinance No. 2960 and adopt the groups’ document.
He said the county’s ordinance has problems with it, and doesn’t allow patients to grow their own marijuana outdoors if they have less than a half acre. Farrington pointed out that they can grow outdoors in greenhouses, a measure Green didn’t find sufficient.
Green also argued against requiring medical marijuana growers to notify their neighbors that they are growing.
Community Development Director Rick Coel, who along with Sheriff Frank Rivero had worked on the county’s cultivation ordinance, asked that in the event the board rescinded its ordinance that the supervisors also would give him and Grant direction to make updates to the county document in order to put an alternative measure on the ballot.
He said he had “some grave concerns about a couple of aspects” of the alternative being proposed by the Lake County Citizens for Responsible Regulations and Lake County Green Farmers Association.
Finley resident Phil Murphy said he felt the only really viable option the board had was rescinding the ordinance. He said marijuana needed to be grown commercially on agricultural land.
“You have to keep this simple,” he said. “That’s the only way to make it workable.”
Fridley told the board they had until the first week of March to come up with their own ordinance for the ballot if they wanted to offer an alternative.
Smith moved to rescind the ordinance, with the motion carrying 5-0.
This is the second referendum within the last three months that has led to the board rescinding an ordinance.
The first, submitted to them by another group in October, targeted the board’s medical marijuana dispensaries ordinance, passed in August.
The board rescinded that document as well, then ordered enforcement actions to move forward on the dispensaries operating in the county, as Lake County News has reported.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
101111 Board of Supervisors - Final Medical Marijuana Cultivation Ordinance
110411 Lake County Marijuana Cultivation Initiative
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