S.T.O.P. (aka Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork) today filed 35,000 petitions at City Hall in an attempt to put the arena to a public vote.  The initiative movement needs about 22,000 valid signatures to be successful.  If it is successful, an initiative will be put to a public vote in June of 2014 to make all arena subsidies require a public vote.  If that is successful, then a vote on the Downtown Arena plan would take place in November of 2014.

First, the signatures have to clear though.  KCRA's David Bienick says that the last three petition drives in Sacramento had about 61-79% rate of valid signatures.

Also, Crown Downtown and Region Builders themselves have filed 15,277 petition withdrawal forms, which also need to be validated by the City Clerk.  Names on S.T.O.P.'s petition will be removed if they also signed one of the petition withdrawal forms.

As most of you will know, S.T.O.P. received the largest portion of their funding ($100,000) from Chris Hansen, the man who tried to buy the team from the Maloofs and move it to Seattle.

We won't know for a few weeks whether the initiative has enough signatures to qualify for the June ballot.  In the meantime, there could be other challenges to the petition drive, most likely from the Mayor's office.

Stay tuned.