New language ordered for initiative to suspend state climate change law - Sacramento Business, Housing Market News | Sacramento Bee

A state judge today ordered the attorney general's office to change its wording of a ballot initiative to roll back the state's landmark climate change law.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley agreed with measure proponents charging that California Attorney General Jerry Brown used misleading language when his office drafted the initiative, Proposition 23.

Frawley said use of the term "major polluters" in election materials carried negative connotations with voters and ordered Brown's office to use the less loaded term "major sources of emissions."

Frawley also said the state inaccurately described the proposition as "abandoning" California's climate change law, or AB 32, and ordered it to substitute the term "suspends."

"My concern is that the word 'polluters' suggests something that comes out of a smokestack. That's where the prejudice lies," Frawley said.