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Gov. Code, § 54255 · Article 10. The Local Government Privatization Act of 1985

Gov. Code, § 54255

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) Any ordinance subject to referendum under Section 54253 shall be published after adoption as required by law for ordinances of the local agency generally, or, if there is no requirement applicable to the ordinance, then once pursuant to Sections 6040 to 6044, inclusive, within 15 days after the adoption of the ordinance.

(b) If a local agency does not otherwise have statutory power to enact an ordinance pursuant to Section 54253, the governing body of the local agency may introduce and enact an ordinance at any regular or adjourned regular meeting by a majority vote of all of its members. If ordinances of a local agency are not otherwise subject to referendum, then the local agency may proceed as follows:

(1) The governing body of the local agency may refer any ordinance enacted pursuant to Section 54253 to the electors of the local agency in the same manner as the board of supervisors of a county may refer county questions pursuant to Section 9140 of the Elections Code.

(2) The electors of the local agency shall have the right to petition for referendum on the ordinance in the same manner and subject to the same rules as are set forth in Sections 9141 to 9145, inclusive, of the Elections Code, except that all computations referred to in those sections and officers of the county mentioned in those sections shall be construed to refer to comparable computations and officers of the local agency.

(c) If the governing board of a local agency is an elected board, the electors of the local agency for the purposes of this section shall be the electors of the territory entitled to vote at elections for members of the governing board or in the case of county service area, the electors within the county service area. If a local agency does not have an elected governing board, the electors residing within the boundaries of the local agency who would be qualified to vote for candidates for Governor at any gubernatorial election shall be the electors of the local agency for the purposes of this section.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 1994, Ch. 923, Sec. 80. Effective January 1, 1995.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&sectionNum=54255.
Text hash
sha256 318a7a413ad54132a6ee19735a0fc3d5911a62b62fead526251a675cbe3e461f
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

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