Voters worried about crime set stage for ballot measure showdown
Inyo County - Inyo County Free Library invites you to Sprout Into Spring! Visit your local library and pick up a few seed packs to ‘Get Out and Grow!” This community outreach is brought to you in partnership with Owens Valley School and Owens Valley Growers. For more information visit inyocounty.us/services/ library
BISHOP - The NIHD Gift Shop has See’s Candy available for Mother’s Day May 12. The Gift Shop is open Tuesday-Thursday, 12 p.m. – 4 p.m. A new selection of baby clothes and other baby items are available as well.
BISHOP - TheAmerican Legion Post 118 will have their meeting on May 1 at 6:00 p.m. at the Elks Lodge, located at 151 East Line Street, Bishop, CA, all veterans are welcome.
BISHOP – American Legion Auxiliary Unit 118, District 27, will be offering poppies for veterans May 1 thru May 25 at Von’s and Grocery Outlet Market in honor of Memorial Day on May 27. Come and meet Joyce, Jan, Danielle, Barbara, Kathy, Lindy and Adie.
BISHOP - Eastern Sierra Community Chorus directed by Nancy Holland and the Mammoth High School Choir directed by Michael Hammers are pleased to present the spring concert ‘The Hills are Alive,’ enjoy music from The Sound of Music, Blue Skies, This Land is Your Land, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, What’ll I Do? and more. This free concert will be held Saturday, May 4 beginning at 7 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 205 N Fowler Street Bishop.
Political cartoons published in this newspaper – as with letters to the editor and op-eds – do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Inyo Register, its employees or its parent company. These cartoons are merely intended to present food-for-thought in a different medium. The Inyo Register (ISSN 1095-5089) Published tri-weekly by Horizon California Publications Inc., 407 W. Line Street, Ste. 8, Bishop, CA 93514. Entered as a Paid Periodical at the office of Bishop, California
Democrats completely dominate California’s state government, and one aspect of that hegemony is their ability to act without compunction.
When doing whatever they want to do, Democratic officeholders don’t have to worry about competition from the state’s shriveled-up Republican Party nor, for the most part, criticism from equally shrunken political media.
Thus, the Capitol has become an echo chamber rather than a forum for forthright debate about issues.
The syndrome explains why its leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, ignored indications that as California emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, its law-abiding residents were becoming increasingly worried about crime. The concerns arose even though voters had approved two ballot measures in the previous decade to lower penalties and in 2020 rejected a measure to get tougher on some crimes.
Democrats were committed to “criminal justice reform,” which meant decreasing penalties for crime, reducing the numbers of offenders behind bars and implicitly viewing them more as victims of an unjust society rather than victimizers.
Post-pandemic worries about crime were fueled by videos depicting brazen carjackings, home robberies and smash and grab assaults on stores. Just before the 2022 elections, the Public Policy Institute of California released a poll that confirmed the shift.
“Californians’ perception of crime spiked during the pandemic – as did certain types of crime,” PPIC found, adding, “nearly 2 in 3 Californians call violence and street crime in their local community a problem. This includes 31% who call them a big problem, a noticeable increase from February 2020 (24%).”
Changing attitudes are particularly evident in the traditionally liberal San Francisco Bay Area, where stores and restaurants have closed their doors after experiencing multiple crimes. San Francisco voters recalled their reform-minded district attorney. Across the bay, Alameda County’s DA also faces a recall effort.
Facts bolster the sentiment. Last July, Attorney General Rob Bonta, a strong criminal justice reform advocate, released annual crime data, revealing that the state’s violent crime rate increased by 6.1% in 2022, and property crime was up 6.2%. Homicides dipped, but robberies jumped by 10.2%.
The dissonance between the public’s changing attitudes and the Capitol’s unchanging commitment to softening criminal penalties reached a climax last year when the Assembly Public
Safety Committee rejected legislation that would have reclassified human trafficking of a minor 93514, under the Act of March 3, 1876. Combining Inyo Register, founded 1883; Inyo Independent and Owens Valley Progress-Citizen, founded 1870; and the Sierra Daily News. All contents are the property of Horizon California Publications Inc. and cannot be reproduced in any way without the written consent of publisher. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Inyo Register, 407 W. Line Street, Ste. 8, Bishop, CA 93514. Phone (760) 873-3535. Fax (760) 258-1347 as a “serious felony,” thereby increasing punishment for committing it.
Similar legislation had repeatedly died in the Legislature but the 2023 rejection touched a nerve and became a media sensation. Newsom and legislative leaders sensed the backlash and quickly revived and enacted the bill.
Having finally gotten the message, Newsom and other Democratic figures began to recast themselves as crime fighters. The governor pledged to crack down on street crime and dispatched dozens of California Highway Patrol officers to bolster Bay Area policing. Legislative leaders now want to fine-tune criminal statutes to crack down on retail theft without materially changing the criminal justice reform measures that the Legislature and voters had enacted.
They also hope to head off a November ballot measure that would go further in undoing some of the previous softer-oncrime decrees. On Thursday, law enforcement groups, big city mayors and major retailers submitted 900,000 signatures for the measure, virtually guaranteeing it a place on the November ballot.
Its heavyweight proponents can easily spend the millions of dollars a full-fledged statewide campaign requires. In a statement, the coalition said “half-measures” are not good enough, an apparent reference to the legislative package.
A head-on collision over crime appears to loom, but it’s also possible that the measure’s backers and Democratic leaders, including Newsom, could reach a compromise that the Legislature would enact and the ballot measure would be withdrawn. It’s happened before.