Pro-oil petition drive in California under question

Community organizer Pete Woiwode was walking to meet a friend at a street festival near downtown Oakland in November when a signature gatherer approached and asked if he wanted to sign a petition to lower gas prices.

But Woiwode said that in reading the petition he realized it actually was for a referendum to overturn SB 1137 — a state law passed in September to ban new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet (975 meters) of schools, homes and hospitals.

As soon as he pushed back against the claim that the petition was about lowering gas prices, the signature gatherer buckled, Woiwode recalled. “He was like, ‘Look man, they’re paying me a lot of money per signature to do this. I know I don’t agree with this but I’ve got to have this job. I need you to sign this petition. Will you do it?’” he said.

Woiwode said no. “I’m not going to actively subvert democracy,” he told The Associated Press.

This didn’t just happen to Woiwode. Several California residents who spoke to the AP allege they were misled by signature gatherers over the last two months as a campaign, Stop the Energy Shutdown, sought to gather enough signatures to get a referendum on the 2024 statewide ballot to overturn SB 1137.

Among them was a man in Oildale, California, in oil-rich Kern County, who said a petitioner told him drilling near neighborhoods has no effect on human health. Another man, in Los Angeles, said a petitioner falsely told him the referendum would ban oil and gas drilling next to schools and hospitals.

SB 1137 — signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in September — was celebrated by environmental justice advocates who had been pushing for this regulation for years to lower air pollution in poor communities and communities of color.

But days after the bill passed, Nielsen Merksamer, a law firm that specializes in ballot measures, filed a referendum to overturn SB 1137 on behalf of Jerome Reedy, a board member of the California Independent Petroleum Association. That association has opposed several state and local measures to regulate oil and gas drilling, including bans and phase outs in Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles.

The Stop the Energy Shutdown campaign began collecting signatures. Last week, it announced it had gathered nearly a million, well over the approximately 630,000 needed to qualify the measure for the 2024 statewide election.