A billionaire-backed vision to erect an idealistic new city on scrubby grassland in rural Solano County is one step closer to becoming reality.

On Tuesday, the Bay Area tech leaders behind the campaign, dubbed California Forever, held a news conference to announce that they had turned over more than 20,000 voter signatures to the Solano County registrar in support of putting the issue before local voters. If the county validates at least 13,062 of those signatures, the measure would go before voters in November, seeking to amend zoning codes to allow the residential project to be built on agricultural land.

“Solano voters have made their first decision, and they have made it loud and clear,” said Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader who is chief executive of California Forever. “People from all walks of life, all parts of the county are all saying the same thing. They are saying, ‘Yes, we want to have a say in the future of this place that we love.’ ”

John Gardner, the county’s assistant registrar of voters, confirmed his office had received the California Forever signatures Tuesday morning.

Gardner said the endeavor marks the first citizens-led ballot initiative in Solano County in more than 30 years. His office has until June 11 to conduct a preliminary review to determine whether enough valid signatures were submitted to put the measure to a vote.

Along with Sramek, backers of the project include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and Patrick and John Collison, who founded the payment-processing company Stripe. As part of their campaign, California Forever in March released an aerial view of the group’s plans for a community of tens of thousands of homes, surrounded by open space and trails, using renewable energy sources.

Backers tout the project as an innovative way to create more affordable housing in close proximity to the Bay Area. The designs call for transforming 18,000 acres now dedicated to ranching and wind farms into a community of 50,000 residents that grows, over time, to as many as 400,000. The project promises 15,000 higher-paying jobs in manufacturing and technology, as well as parks, bike lanes and a solar farm.

Even if the measure is certified for the November ballot and voters approve it, the project faces a number of challenges and regulatory hurdles. Chief among those are additional approvals, including from the federal government, and the specter of lawsuits from environmental groups that have signaled they intend to take the nascent effort to court.

The project’s development began years ago with a series of mysterious land purchases by a secretive LLC called Flannery Associates. The group bought thousands of acres of farmland, totaling more than $800 million, over several years, raising concerns it was a front for foreign actors seeking to spy on nearby Travis Air Force Base.

Instead, the group’s members were revealed not as spies but as titans of the tech industry laying the groundwork for a model city that California Forever and its supporters say will help recast California’s image. While environmentalists and other critics have questioned that claim, the outfit pledges that the city will be green, walkable and socioeconomically diverse.

Walmart on Tuesday launched a line of store-branded groceries, stocking shelves with items like hot honey seasoning, a frozen dessert made of oat milk and several offerings for shoppers avoiding gluten or added sugar.

The line called Bettergoods marks the retail giant’s push to captivate more consumers, especially younger ones, and to win over more of a market dominated, in recent years, by companies such as Monrovia-based Trader Joe’s and Costco whose store-branded items — including chocolate-covered banana slices or chile and lime rolled tortilla chips or anything under the Kirkland Signature brand — have built cult followings of their own.

Private-label store brands have grown more popular in recent years as consumers have faced rising costs. Supermarket giant Kroger Co. previously announced it plans to add more than 800 private-label products this year.

Most of the new Walmart items, which will max out in cost at around $15, will sell for less than $5, according to a statement from the Bentonville, Ark.-based company on Tuesday.

Walmart executives said the new line marks the company’s largest private-brand food launch in 20 years.

Scott Morris, Walmart’s senior vice president of private brands, food and consumables, described the line as “quality, unique, chef-inspired food at an incredible value” — a nod to consumers’ desires for both trendy, flavorful foods and cutting costs amid stubbornly high inflation.

The new items fall into three categories — items geared toward food trends, a section of plant-based options branded with green packaging and a group of “Made Without” products for shoppers looking for items without gluten, added sugar or artificial flavors or colorings.

Among items customers can now find on shelves: a container of hot honey seasoning for around $3, oat milk dessert for $3.44 a pint and a line of soups served in jars for around $4.

The addition of 300 items will mean less coveted shelf space for other brands fighting for placement in stores.

The launch, which was reported first by the Wall Street Journal, comes as Walmart scales back investments in other areas, including shuttering several health clinics it opened in recent years.

A Walmart spokesperson declined to say how many people would lose their jobs but said the clinics likely would close in two to three months.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa doesn’t own any cryptocurrency — at least, not yet. But he’s about to become a player in the industry’s push for friendlier cryptocurrency rules.

The trading platform Coinbase announced Tuesday that Villaraigosa, a Democrat who was mayor of Los Angeles from 2005 to 2013, is taking a paid position with its global advisory council.

In an interview with The Times, Villaraigosa said that he won’t be lobbying on behalf of Coinbase but that he is advising the company on securing a “robust, fair regulatory framework” for American customers.

Villaraigosa will focus on how to make financial systems more equitable for Black and Latino customers, Coinbase said. The company estimated that about 41% of American crypto investors are Black and Latino.

“Crypto users participate in our democracy like anyone else,” Villaraigosa said. “They need regulatory protection.”

Villaraigosa’s hiring is part of a broader publicity and lobbying effort by Coinbase after years of conflict between the industry and federal regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Criminal investigations have recently taken down two of the best-known figures in the crypto industry: former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March, and former Binance Chief Executive Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty last year to a money-laundering charge.

Coinbase and other firms have argued that the U.S. should be friendlier to the industry and that clearer rules are necessary to help American crypto companies compete with exchanges in countries with laxer regulations.

The industry has been spending heavily in the 2024 election cycle, signaling its willingness to boost candidates who support crypto priorities in Washington and oust those who don’t.

The policy advisory council that Villaraigosa is joining includes former Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, a Democrat, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, as well as political veterans such as John Anzalone, the pollster for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 and President Biden’s campaign in 2020.

Villaraigosa brings to the group a “feel for the body politic,” said Faryar Shirzad, Coinbase’s chief policy officer.

He “understands broader public attitude, public opinion, public sentiment, in a way that has been really helpful,” Shirzad added.

Villaraigosa said he would be helping with Coinbase’s efforts to push for a “level playing field,” including for stablecoin, a form of cryptocurrency that is ostensibly pegged one-to-one to the value of the U.S. dollar or an asset like gold.

Villaraigosa said crypto is a promising alternative for Black and Latino investors who have faced racial discrimination at traditional banks. He added that crypto platforms could also serve as an alternative for people who send money to family members in other countries, known as remittances.

People in the United States sent more than $81 billion abroad in 2022, according to the World Bank. The average fee for a $200 remittance payment across the world was 6.18% in the third quarter of last year, the organization said.

The cost to send money to family members through crypto platforms like Coinbase is “de minimis,” or minor, in comparison, Villaraigosa said.

Since leaving Los Angeles City Hall in 2013, Villaraigosa has taught at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and has worked as a partner at the consulting firm Actum. He mounted a campaign for governor in 2018, finishing third in the primary behind Gov. Gavin Newsom and Republican John Cox.

In 2022, Newsom tapped Villaraigosa to be a top adviser on infrastructure issues, tasked with helping to identify projects that could reap federal funding from Biden’s infrastructure law.

Villaraigosa has also worked as an adviser to Banc of California, the multi-level marketing company Herbalife and the AltaMed chain of health clinics.