I won't chime in further on the referendums/referenda controversy, but there 
was a more recent referendum than the one on the Peripheral Canal, although 
it did not ultimately attract much attention.  In the March 2000 Primary, 
there was a vote on Prop 29, which was a referendum sponsored by the Agua 
Caliente Indian tribe challenging the Legislature's 1998 approval of a series 
of Indian gaming compacts signed by then-Governor Wilson, which the remaining 
tribes thought were too restrictive and set a bad precedent for them in their 
negotiations and legal strategy for future gaming compacts.  The 
qualification of the referendum in November 1998 placed those original 
compacts on "hold" until the March 2000 vote.  In the meantime, the 
Legislature agreed to put another Indian Gaming measure on the March 2000 
ballot (Proposition 1A), which effectively mooted out the need for the 
referendum (indeed, it caused the Indians to urge a "no" vote on their own 
referendum) and led it to recede into the background.  Proposition 1A passed, 
the referendum was defeated, and the money flows in the Indian gaming 
casinos.

There is a rather stringent time limit within which the signatures must be 
gathered in order to qualify a statewide referendum, which has made the cost 
of qualifying a statewide referendum prohibitive to all but those who can 
afford to spend the $3 million dollars or so that it would take to pay to 
gather the necessary signatures.  That is why statewide referenda (there -- I 
dared to enter into the debate after all) are so rare in California.


Fredric D. Woocher
Strumwasser & Woocher LLP
fwoocher@strumwooch.com
(310) 576-1233