San Diego’s now 3 1/2-year-old ballot measure to fund a long-sought convention center expansion will remain in limbo following a decision by the California Supreme Court to not review a contested court ruling on the initiative’s outcome at the ballot box.
The court’s refusal last week to weigh in on the matter means continued delays as the San Diego case once again wends its way through the judicial system. The next step is to send the matter back to San Diego County Superior Court to decide just one question — whether the ballot proposition, known as Measure C, legally qualified as a citizens’ initiative. That designation is crucial to determining whether it ed with a simple majority vote as opposed to a two-thirds margin.
An appellate court decision concluded in August that the measure ed in 2020 with a simple majority vote, but the three-judge said it was unable to decide the related question of whether the ballot proposition qualified as a citizens’ initiative.
The state Supreme Court offered no commentary on its decision to deny review, an outcome that came as no surprise to Measure C backers. From the beginning, their attorneys had pointed out that the court declines the vast majority of requests it receives to weigh in on appellate court decisions.
“We are disappointed that the Supreme Court did not take the case to resolve it quickly,” said attorney Michael Colantuono, who represents Yes! For a Better San Diego, a coalition of tourism, business and labor leaders who led the effort to qualify the measure for the ballot. “But we are committed to getting this resolved as quickly as possible to implement the will of a great majority of San Diego voters who approved Measure C to fund roads, homelessness services, and a Convention Center expansion. We look forward to working with the Superior Court to resolve the remaining issue.”
Colantuono said Monday that he hopes the remaining issue surrounding Measure C will be resolved in the lower court within the first half of next year, although it could extend to the end of 2024. Appeals, however, will likely follow, he acknowledged.
Measure C sought to raise the city’s 10.5 percent hotel tax to as much as 13.75 percent, which was expected to raise close to $7 billion to finance an enlarged convention center — a civic priority for well over a decade — as well as services for the homeless and street repairs.
It was thought at the time of the March 2020 election that the proposition had failed because it did not garner the two-thirds majority that voters were told was needed for approval, although it came very close. Since then, multiple appellate court decisions have concluded a simple majority approval is adequate when a tax hike is placed on the ballot by citizens.
The 4th District Court of Appeal agreed with those other decisions and in so doing, reversed a Superior Court decision last year that said the city’s elected leaders had no legal authority to change the outcome of the measure a year after the election. The court, however, was less certain about whether Measure C met the legal threshold of being a citizen-led initiative free of government control or participation.
California Taxpayers Action Network, or CTAN, one of the groups legally challenging the city’s authority to declare victory, had argued that Measure C was a “negotiated, sponsored, ed, and promoted city-sponsored initiative,” and therefore could not legally be defined as a citizens’ initiative.
In of that argument, the group stated that the chief operating officer of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, Jaymie Bradford, was also a principal organizer for the Measure C campaign committee while she was a member of the board of the San Diego Convention Center Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the city.
Attorney Cory Briggs, who represents CTAN, said Monday that he and his client will now “proceed with our court-authorized investigation of the public officials who peddled Measure C in the disguise of a citizen’s initiative and look forward to proving that in court.”
Both the city and Yes! For a Better San Diego hoped to prevail, based, in part, on two separate San Francisco cases where local leaders had a hand in special tax measures. In one of the cases, the San Francisco Unified School District drafted a tax measure that the teachers’ union turned into an initiative. Both the school board and the union were identified as ers. But the school district’s role did not alter the measure’s legal status as a citizens’ initiative, the court of appeals determined.
Colantuono argues that Bradford was a volunteer appointee of a nonprofit corporation that the city formed to run the convention center and was not elected, unlike the school board in the San Francisco case.
Alliance San Diego, a nonprofit community organization that originally filed suit in 2021 to challenge the city’s authority to effectively alter the outcome of the 2020 election, was among those parties who had requested review by the state’s highest court.
Executive Director Andrea Guerrero said Monday that the question of whether Measure C is technically a citizen’s initiative was not an issue her organization had focused on. Rather, she said, her lawsuit was all about election integrity.
“I think the issue of election integrity remains our foremost concern and we will continue to fight the fight to protect our democracy,” she said. “The courts are one venue but the ballot is another.”
