On television’s The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett and brood moved to Beverly Hills from the Ozarks after striking oil. Ironically, real-world Jeds and Elly Mays live in Beverly Hills today—and they’re not pleased with Measure O, a city ballot measure that would impose oil severance taxes on the oil fields… of Beverly Hills.
Apparently, Beverly Hills sits above an oil field. How appropriate.
Anyhow, one can imagine that people feel strongly, and might even seek to communicate with voters! Which they are technically welcome to do—subject to an astonishing disclaimer ordinance also recently adopted by the City of Beverly Hills.
The text is reproduced below [emphasis added]. Try to come up with some reasonable justification for this laundry list of requirements—one that doesn’t include suppression of speech (and passes a laugh test):
…
C. Every advertisement in support of or opposition to a city ballot measure placed by a ballot measure committee shall include the name of the committee and shall include a clearly visible or audible disclosure statement containing the actual legal name of any person(s) whose cumulative contributions, whether cash or in-kind, to the ballot measure committee total ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or more in the twelve (12) calendar months immediately preceding the first qualifying payment for that advertisement. If there is more than one donor that has contributed ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or more in the twelve (12) calendar months immediately preceding the first qualifying payment for that advertisement, the ballot measure committee shall identify in any advertisements the highest donor first followed by other donors in descending order of contribution amount. The order shall be determined on the last practicable date before the advertisement is generally or publicly communicated.
D. Every advertisement in support of or opposition to a city ballot measure shall include a statement indicating that additional information about contributions to the ballot measure committee paying for the advertisement is available at www.beverlyhills.org. …
E. The disclosure statement required to be included in an advertisement pursuant to this Section shall be shown legibly and in a conspicuous manner, in no less than 14-point type in printed, video, or email format, and for at least one-half of the time duration of the advertisement if the advertisement consists of video material. If the advertisement is audio, telephonic or transmitted in some other audible form only, the information shall be spoken so as to be clearly audible and understood by the intended public and otherwise appropriately conveyed for the hearing impaired. Such disclosure statement required to be included in an advertisement by this Section shall convey the following information in substantially the following form:
“This communication is presented by [name of committee] with major funding provided by [legal name of donors in descending order of amount of contribution]. These donors are listed in descending order of contribution amount. More current information regarding the sources of funding for this election campaign is available at www.beverlyhills.org.” This disclosure statement shall not list any donor except donors required to be disclosed by subsection C.
F. In addition to the other requirements of this section, every advertisement in support of, or opposition to, one or more city ballot measures shall contain the official title of the city ballot measure, as provided by the City Attorney, in a clearly audible or legible form.”
That doesn’t leave much room for content, now does it? I doubt that is an accident.
Bear in mind that the threshold for becoming a “ballot measure committee” is $1,000 in contributions or expenditures, a threshold which applies to any person or group of persons. No man is an island, but in Beverly Hills that man can be a “committee.”
This latest Beverly Hills oil dispute also has echoes from another iconic television show, Saved by the Bell. Viewers of a certain age will recall a 1991 episode, where the gang at Bayside High discovers oil under the football field. This find sparks intense wrangling among the students and staff as they’re tempted by a developer to cash out on the find.
A creative YouTube user memorialized the episode in a mash-up with the trailer from “There Will Be Blood”:
