Moderated by Joe Mathews, Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation

Hotels attempt to use a referendum to block another hotel’s plans in Beverly Hills. A mall takes its argument against a competitor’s mall to the voters in Glendale. The owner of a local chain of hardware stores uses a ballot initiative to prevent Home Depot from opening a new store on his turf in Thousand Oaks. California businesses are increasingly taking their disputes with cities, labor and especially each other to municipal ballots in the form of initiatives and referenda. As a result, voters, not the market, are forced to pick business winners and losers and decide complex development, planning and zoning questions that are supposed to be handled by city governments. A panel of political and government leaders who have been involved in such ballot fights—including political consultants Rob Stutzman and Harvey Englander, Anaheim city councilwoman Lorri Galloway, and labor strategist and advocate Madeline Janis—discuss the trend and its costs. Why are more of these disputes ending up on the ballot? Do these measures slow growth or add to the cost of doing business in California? Are large businesses able to buy policy with expensive ballot campaigns? What other forces—poor municipal finances, weak financing, the interests of lawyers and political consultants–may be contributing to these fights?