Secretary of State Okays AHF Ballot Initiative For Signatures

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—On Thursday, March 19, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced that AIDS Healthcare Foundation has been given the go-ahead to begin gathering the 365,880 signatures of California registered voters needed to put his "California Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act" on the November, 2016 statewide ballot. Padilla's announcement, which can be found here, apparently indicates that Attorney General Kamala Harris has already given her office's OK to both the legal title of the proposed measure and a summary of its contents as follows: "ADULT FILMS. CONDOMS. HEALTH REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Requires performers in adult films to use condoms during filming of sexual intercourse. Requires producers of adult films to pay for performer vaccinations, testing, and medical examinations related to sexually transmitted infections. Requires producers to obtain state health license at beginning of filming and to post condom requirement at film sites. Imposes liability on producers for violations, on certain distributors, on performers if they have a financial interest in the violating film, and on talent agents who knowingly refer performers to noncomplying producers. Permits state, performers, or any state resident to enforce violations. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Potentially reduced state and local tax revenue of millions or tens of millions of dollars per year. Likely state costs of a few million dollars annually to administer the law. Possible ongoing net costs or savings for state and local health and human services programs. (15-0004.)" Notably not included in Harris's summary is measure proponent (and AIDS Healthcare Foundation president) Michael Weinstein's proposed employment by the state to defend the measure, if passed, in court: "In the event the Attorney General fails to defend this Act; or the Attorney General fails to appeal an adverse judgment against the constitutionality or statutory permissibly of this Act, in whole or in part, in any court, the Act's proponent shall be entitled to assert his direct and personal stake by defending the Act's validity in any court and shall be empowered by the citizens through this Act to act as an agent of the citizens of the State of California subject to the following conditions: (1) the proponent shall not be considered an 'at-will' employee of the State of California, but the Legislature shall have the authority to remove the proponent from his agency role by a majority vote of each house of the Legislature when 'good cause' exists to do so, as that term is defined by California case law; (2) the proponent shall take the Oath of Office under California Constitution, Article XX, §3 as an employee of the State of California; (3) the proponent shall be subject to all fiduciary, ethical, and legal duties prescribed by law; and (4) the proponent shall be indemnified by the State of California for only reasonable expenses and other losses incurred by the proponent, as agent, in defending the validity of the challenged Act. The rate of indemnification shall be no more than the amount it would cost the State to perform the defense itself." Note that if this ballot measure is enacted, not only would Weinstein be salaried by the state to defend the measure, but his employment could not be terminated except by a majority vote in both houses of the state legislature, and then, only for "good cause," a legal concept so vague as to make such termination highly unlikely. Weinstein's hired signature gatherers will have until Sept. 14, 2015, to collect the required 365,880 registered voter signatures, which Padilla's press release notes is "five percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2014 gubernatorial election," and those signatures may be gathered from anywhere in the state, including areas where adult content production is either underground or non-existent, and the voters relatively ignorant of the "barrier protection" controversy that has embroiled the industry for the past five years. AVN has reached out to Attorney General Kamala Harris's office to get more information regarding the Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance's report(s) of the fiscal impact of the measure on state and local government to see if the report breaks down any more specifically the "millions or tens of millions of dollars per year" in lost state and local tax revenues, as well as the "likely state costs of a few million dollars annually to administer the law." At press time, no response had been received. Of note: Padilla had once been president of the Los Angeles City Council when a bill targeting adult nightclubs was debated and eventually voted down (though a less intrusive compromise measure was passed), and was also on the California Senate's Labor and Industrial Relations Committee when Rep. Isadore Hall III's condom/barrier protection bill AB 1576 was considered, and which Padilla had voted against in committee, though it was eventually passed by that committee.