47,000 Voters Sign Public Safety Petition

Nearly 47,000 Ventura County voters have signed a petition supporting a ballot initiative that would guarantee that all sales tax dollars generated from Proposition 172 are used only for public safety services, according to campaign organizers.

“It’s what we expected,” said Otto Stoll, president of Citizens for a Safe Ventura County. “This is what the people want.”

Although only 44,000 signatures are needed to force a special election for the initiative, Stoll said organizers plan to collect more than 50,000 by the April 25 deadline in order to ensure a comfortable margin. Some signatures will be disqualified, he said.

Proposition 172, which won huge support from California voters in 1993, established a permanent half-cent sales tax to fund public safety agencies.

In response, the Board of Supervisors last year struck a deal with law enforcement officials to provide $24 million in sales tax money to expand public safety programs. But faced with a large deficit, the supervisors later voted 4 to 1, with Supervisor John K. Flynn dissenting, to divert some of the Proposition 172 money to other programs.

As a result, the county’s top law

enforcement officials joined with Stoll’s group in January to launch a petition drive for a local ballot initiative that would specifically define public safety agencies as the sheriff, district attorney, public defender and probation services.

Flynn and Supervisors Frank Schillo and Judy Mikels have signed the petition. However, they said they would prefer adopting the measure as an ordinance rather than holding a special election.