Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

A City in Need of CPR

Next Tuesday, Cincinnati voters will decide Issue 4, a charter amendment petitioned onto the ballot by a citizens’ group called Cincinnati for Pension Reform (CPR).

If passed, the initiative will put newly hired city employees into a 401(k)-style retirement program, while protecting the pensions of current city retirees and workers through annual audits, publicly reported results, and requiring the city to take steps to close any fund deficit.

The Queen City’s public pension system is in deep trouble. Even by the city’s rosy accounting, it’s only 61 percent funded, with a whopping unfunded liability of $862 million. Moody’s recently downgraded the city’s credit rating, specifically because of its pension liabilities.

Nonetheless, Issue 4 faces fierce opposition from a group “primarily funded” by government workers’ unions. “In just two weeks,” reports the Cincinnati Enquirer, “the committee raised $207,970 . . . It received contributions from only two individuals, totaling $750, including a $500 contribution from former acting Cincinnati city manager and current Dayton city manager Tim Riordan.”

Jeff Harmon, president of a union representing 850 city workers said, “This measure is going to lead to higher taxes and possible lawsuits for the city and would potentially bankrupt Cincinnati.”

Why would actually funding the promises the city has already made to workers “lead to higher taxes” or “bankrupt Cincinnati”?

Who would file those “possible lawsuits”? It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this is a polite way of saying: If you don’t vote the way we want, we’ll sue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

A Veto for the People

The war on democracy is ongoing. One of the ironies some folks note is that the biggest opponents of citizens’ direct say in government tend to be sitting Democratic politicians. But Democrats who earnestly support democracy can take heart, for not only can they remind Republicans of recent GOP-led jihads against initiative rights, but Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, just vetoed an initiative-silencing bill in California.

Of course, it was concocted by labor unions for their benefit, and was supported by Democrats in the Assembly, but still: Huzzahs for Jerry Brown!

Assembly Bill 857, advanced by Cupertino’s Paul Fong, would have placed hurdles on the petitioning process by limiting the paying of petitioners to qualify initiatives for the ballot. The vetoed law, if enacted, would have required 10 percent of valid signatures to be volunteers. But “volunteer” included union workers who were, in fact, being paid to circulate petitions.

And that was one of the governor’s complaints about the weaselly legislation.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association had gone on record opposing the measure, charging that it would have made the process more difficult for most groups with its cumbersome record-keeping requirements. And another part of the bill, as Neal Hobson summarized at Citizens in Charge,

would have established a right for any California citizen to sue the sponsors of initiative petitions by claiming they had turned in any fraudulent signatures. Whether such charges could be substantiated or not, the resultant litigation could bankrupt initiative campaigns with legal fees.

Devious political minds obviously cooked up this bill. Exclude Gov. Brown from that designation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall links Second Amendment rights

Townhall: Plumber Wrench into the Gears of Gun Control

The First and Second Amendment are very good friends. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’re close, one always protecting the other, as we witnessed again last week in Colorado. 

For more on the big Rocky Mountain State recall vote, click on over to Townhall.com. And then come back here for a few more links.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall Second Amendment rights

Two-Way Communication

Tonight Americans have an opportunity to listen to President Barack Obama as he directly states his case for a U.S. military attack on Syria. Wouldn’t it be nice if, for one day, instead of Americans listening to the president, the president had to listen to us?

Not just on Syria . . . on anything.

Well, Eureka!

The polls will be open in Colorado all day before the Big O’s big oration, from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm Rocky Mountain Time, enabling voters to do the talking in the first recall elections of state legislators in Colorado history.

This is no mere politician monologue, but a real democratic dialogue. And you can bet politicians will be listening — from state legislators to the gun-controller-in-chief.

The conversation started this past legislative session, when Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Senator Angela Giron (D-Pueblo) moved two laws through the Colorado Legislature. Anti-gun laws. This angered Second Amendment activists. The conversation continued when a group of citizens decided they weren’t willing to suffer silently; they drew up recall petitions and then gathered tens of thousands of voter signatures, triggering the recalls.

That’s a lot of hoops to jump through. The president can simply call up the networks and almost instantly communicate to millions. But citizens have to work harder for their talk time.

So, listen respectfully to the president tonight, by all means . . . but remember that, if you want politicians to listen, the initiative, referendum and recall constitute one heckuva megaphone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

Another Trout in the Milk

Maine’s small farmers had held out great hope for LD 1282, explained the Bangor Daily News a few months ago. The bill, if made law, would have allowed “unlicensed farmers whose facilities are not under inspection to sell up to 20 gallons of raw milk per day directly to consumers, so long as the product was clearly labeled.”

For small farmers, a traditional freedom, a niche in the system.

For big farmers it presented an unwelcome double standard, allowing something for the little guy that the big guy couldn’t match. And yes, the bill did suffer from this kind of inconsistency, but only because current regulations all stack against small farmers.

The bill passed, but last month the governor vetoed it . . . and the veto was not overridden. No legal raw milk in Maine.

For some in the state’s Republican Party, including national committee member Mark Wilson, that was just too much. “We want our God-given rights to buy, sell and consume what we want protected by the law — not restricted by FDA or USDA directives.” Citing lack of principle on the federal level, too, they resigned from the party, choosing to focus on helping their “fellow Mainers outside of party politics.”

The story hit the papers.

Can they accomplish more good outside the GOP? Probably. The state’s initiative and referendum process rated a C in Citizens in Charge’s 2010 report; most states rate an F. But there’s no point in even trying to rate partisan politics. It’s that bad.

And direct citizen action is certainly less frustrating. It’s hard when you must fight not only the opposition party, but your own team as well.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Division and Democracy

Recalls of elected officials are said to be “divisive.” And, I guess, to an extent they are. The elected official being recalled seems to take it personally.

At times, democracy can be messy and unpleasant, since we don’t all agree on everything, including whether the guy or gal the majority of us reluctantly agreed to in the last election deserves to finish out his or her term of office. Across America, where citizens have access to the process, elected officials are recalled pretty infrequently, though more often recently than in yesteryears.

Politicians with power are more often running amok, so no wonder citizens exercise this democratic check “more often.” What’s the alternative?

Some would say wait until the next election. But sometimes waiting years for the next election is potentially too damaging or dangerous. This is even more so where democracy is more fragile, say in Egypt.

In this most populous Arab nation, street protests against the elected government were followed by a military coup d’état, tanks thundering down Main Street, the arrest of the president and other government officials, violent street battles and shootings of unarmed citizens protesting the government’s removal.

As official Washington decides whether or not to call it a coup — in effect, whether to fund those who carried out the overthrow —  it dawned on me that a democratic process whereby elected leaders can be peacefully removed — i.e., recall — is a whole lot better and safer than street protests and military coups.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary U.S. Constitution

No Right to Defend Your Rights

You have no right as a voter to defend your interests as a voter. Not in federal court.

So decides the Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, a case about a controversial California ballot question. The court ruled 5-4 that petitioners “lack standing.” Their interest wasn’t “particularized” enough.

Passed in 2008, Proposition 8 amends the California constitution to stipulate that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Two questions must be distinguished. One, whether Proposition 8 is consistent with the U.S. Constitution. The high court could have agreed with the lower one that it isn’t. Two, whether voters – in this particular case, the official state recognized proponents of the measure – may judicially defend a law brought to ballot by themselves and duly enacted, when state officials decline to defend that law.

I’m no fan of Prop 8. But for the land’s highest court to rule that voters and petitioners have no “standing” here is a horrid precedent. It tells government officials to take heart if they dislike a law that voters have passed. Maybe not enforce or defend it at all, say — and regardless of any constitutional finding. After all, what can We the People do? It’s not as if we have standing!

Justice Kennedy, in dissent, pinpoints the default: “the Court fails to grasp or accept . . . the basic premise of the initiative process . . .  The essence of democracy is that the right to make law rests in the people and flows to the government, not the other way around.”

Oh, yes, the people do have standing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall Second Amendment rights

A Voter Revolt

The signatures are in: 16,199 of them — twice as many as needed to initiate the first recall election of a state lawmaker in Colorado history.

The target of voter ire? Senate President John Morse. He ticked off his El Paso County constituents by spearheading the recent triple whammy of gun control legislation that neatly bypassed Colorado voters earlier this year.

You may remember the controversy. The three bills in question, signed by the governor as emergency legislation so that no voter referendum was possible, elicited widespread negative reactions in the state, including nearly every county sheriff in Colorado publicly opposing the bills.

So, why did the sheriffs oppose the legislation, while Democrats in the legislature passed the bills?

Like state legislators, sheriffs are elected. But, unlike legislators, sheriffs deal with self-defending citizens qua citizens, as well as criminals and victims, on a regular basis. Such experience brings a different perspective, and makes sheriffs more skeptical of blunt legislative solutions.

Traditionally, Democrats — despite the fondness demonstrated by their party constituencies for increased government control over private weapons — tend to treat the issue of “gun control” with some modicum of care. At least, those in the mid-west and western states tend to.

But Senator Morse did not.

Morse won the senate seat back in 2010 by fewer than 350 votes, with a Libertarian Party candidate racking up 1,320 votes — almost 5 percent. Libertarians are strongly pro-Second Amendment. Yet, Morse treated his narrow victory as a call for sweeping change. A mandate!

He may reap the “reward” for such “courage.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Arkansans, Call Your Lawyers

Seeing how the IRS flagrantly violates the civil rights of Americans, do we really need more government agents, more bureaucracies to ride herd over our political endeavors?

Arkansas’s Senate Bill 821, an unconstitutional slap at citizens who dare propose ballot measures, was passed despite my many, many, many complaints, and is being implemented as Act 1413.

The law mandates that every paid petitioner read the Secretary of State’s booklet explaining the state’s initiative process. But the booklet didn’t even exist . . . until now.

It explains: “The Secretary of State’s Office has attempted to incorporate the changes made by Act 1413 into the procedures that follow. However, since the changes in the law were extensive, it may be helpful to review Act 1413 of 2013.”

How nice of the Secretary of State not to use the term “extreme” and to go, instead, with “extensive.” Call it Arkansan generosity.

One of Act 1413’s more draconian provisions throws out an entire page of voters’ signatures on a petition if one signature is a voter from a different county.

“Determining whether a Petitioner has signed the correct petition is not always obvious. Many cities cross county boundaries,” the booklet sympathizes, noting that such honest mistakes happen “frequently with voters whose homes are near a county border.”

And will now be used against you.

The main thing the booklet advises? Hire a lawyer:

“If the reader has questions concerning Act 1413 of 2013 . . . the reader should contact his or her own attorney for a legal opinion as to specific facts.”

Should only citizens with their “own” attorney be able to participate?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Rocky Mountain Facts

Norma Anderson is one of the politician-plaintiffs challenging Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights in federal court. The former Republican state senator claims the citizen-enacted measure, requiring a vote of the people to raise taxes, is unconstitutional. Why? It violates the legislature’s divine right to raise taxes without having to bother to obtain voter approval.

“We should eliminate the initiative to change the constitution,” she wrote in the bimonthly magazine of the Colorado Municipal League, “but continue the process for the statutes.”

Then, only the legislature would have the power to propose amendments — or, I should say, not propose amendments — like term limits or tax-and-spending limits.

Plus, legislators can repeal any statutory initiative they don’t like. That happened with campaign finance reform.

Anderson complains that Colorado’s “constitution has been amended repeatedly by initiative” and that all those amendments “have made it the wordiest and longest in the nation.”

True?

No. Colorado doesn’t have the longest state constitution. Or the second longest. Or third or fourth or the fifth longest. Colorado’s ranks seventh in word count.

Moreover, the campaign finance measure noted above accounts for nearly 10 percent of the constitution’s verbiage.

Besides, most of the amendments to Colorado’s constitution have come from legislators, not through citizen-initiated petitions. Since voter initiatives began, roughly two-thirds, 63 percent, have come from the legislature.

Forget the facts, though, Anderson and her fellow politicians have had enough of popular government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.