CLU students' project may have shot at lawbooks

This was not your typical final.

Instead of taking an exam, graduate students in a public policy class this spring at California Lutheran University had to write their own statewide ballot initiative, then defend it before their classmates in a PowerPoint presentation.

The idea was to give students a first-hand look at the state's initiative process, said Jeff Gorell, a local attorney who taught the class at the Thousand Oaks university.

"We wanted them to do more than write a paper," Gorell said. "We wanted them to see that participating in the democratic process is not outside their reach."

After presenting their initiatives, which covered issues ranging from illegal immigration to healthcare reform, the class voted last week on the best to send to the state Legislative Counsel's Office, which will rewrite it in proper legal language.

Sean Brennan, a high school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District who took Gorell's course, had the winning initiative a proposal to increase career technical education.

"The school system needs to be more relevant to students so they're not dropping out," Brennan said. "If they were learning something directly related to a career, they'd be more interested."

In California, any citizen can propose an initiative that, if it gets enough signatures, can go before voters in an election.

The first step is to write the initiative, then gather 25 signatures in support of it. The initiative then can be submitted to the Legislative Counsel's Office, which will put it in the proper legal language.

From there, the next step is to pay $200 to send it to the Attorney General's Office, which will provide a title and summary.

And then comes the big hurdle. Initiative supporters have 150 days to gather a lot of signatures 5 percent of the total voter turnout in the last gubernatorial election.

That's somewhere from 400,000 to 600,000 signatures, Brennan estimated. And the cost to do that? About $2 million.

"It takes a pretty fair amount of money," said Jeff DeLand, chief deputy of the Legislative Counsel's Office. "That's a threshold that's somewhat difficult to meet."

So Gorell is being realistic. Brennan's initiative got the 25 signatures and was submitted Tuesday to the Counsel's Office, and Gorell said his law firm, Gorell Advocacy in Oxnard, will pay the $200 to move it to the attorney general. But it probably will go no further than the state archives, the home of initiative proposals that never make it to the ballot.

Then again, career technical education is a hot topic right now, and it's supported by the governor.

"Somebody may be so inspired by his idea that they start a drive to collect the requisite signatures," Gorell said. "Sean's idea is not so left of field that it may not get the attention of the political elite in Sacramento."