Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Eleven Fiftieths

Eleven states have “bottle bills,” legislation requiring vendors to collect a deposit on each container they sell of soda pop, iced tea, energy drinks, etc. It basically mimics the old, voluntary system of recycling, where bottling companies would pay people to return glass bottles, for reuse.

When I was a kid, cheaper materials (aluminum, plastic) made the old system uneconomical. So environmentalists pushed through legislation in Oregon, and then elsewhere, to create government-​mandated recycling systems.

Oregon’s legislature just passed a “sweeping revision” of the bill, upping the deposit amount from five cents to ten and expanding the program. John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute testified at a legislative hearing against the revision. According to Charles, bottle deposit recycling conflicts with curbside recycling, which Charles argues is far more efficient — or at least easier to use than lugging containers back to return centers, which are usually sticky, smelly, and.…

Well, Charles didn’t talk about the stink. One of my Washington State informers did.

You see, Washington not only lacks a bottle bill, such efforts fail with larger percentages each time one hits the state’s ballot. But the beverage containers sold in Washington have the same deposit/​return guarantees as in Oregon. So some Washingtonians transport their in-​state purchases — sans five-​cent deposit — across the border for unearned returns.

You might think that fighting such cheating would be of more concern to Oregon lawmakers than making it even more lucrative to out-​of-​state profiteers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

A Bad Sign

A Centerville, Virginia, man made news when he agreed to his wife’s demand that he stand at a busy intersection wearing a sign emblazoned “I Cheated: This is My Punishment.” His merciful wife ended the punishment after just a couple hours.

In recent years, a few judges have sporadically sought to shame criminals in similar fashion. Back in 2007, several people convicted of shoplifting opted to avoid a longer jail sentence by donning a sign outside the store they had ripped off, which read, “I Am a Thief, I Stole from Wal-​Mart.” But Wal-​Mart soon opted out of such spectacle.

Now, the California State Senate has passed new legislation to force folks to wear similar signs. But not for committing any crime.

Unless petitioning one’s government is now criminal.

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier’s Senate Bill 448 seeks to harass and belittle the citizens who circulate petitions by making each wear a sign “on his or her chest” that reads “PAID SIGNATURE GATHERER” or “VOLUNTEER SIGNATURE GATHERER.” The sign would also inform the public which county the petitioner is registered to vote in, or must say, “NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE.” The lettering must be in at least 30-​point type.

Sen. DeSaulnier calls this “transparency.” But transparency isn’t necessary for all petitioning, apparently: SB 448 doesn’t require those collecting signatures to put a state legislator on the ballot to wear such a sign. 

It applies only to those who dare use the citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Give Me Fever

Today, the U.S. Conference of Mayors premiers its new video, “Recall Fever: Stop the Madness,” at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The video is part of a “public awareness initiative” to convince folks that recalling their mayor is “destructive” and “costly.”

“This archaic rule,” said U.S. Conference of Mayors chief executive Tom Cochran recently, “is being put to sinister use.”

But just how sinister was it when 69 percent of Ogden, Kansas, voters recalled their mayor last year? What would you do were you to discover, after the election, that your mayor had served more than a decade in neighboring state prisons for burglary, aggravated assault and involuntary manslaughter?

The 88 percent of Miami/​Dade, Florida, voters who unseated their mayor last month don’t seem sinister, either — his self-​dealing and cronyism, on the other hand, surely qualify.

Though the anti-​recall event doesn’t feature any mayor who has actually been removed from office through recall, more sensible testimony can be found from the ranks of the ousted: Carmen Kontur-​Gronquist of Arlington, Oregon. After online pictures of her posing scantily clad on a city fire truck created a firestorm, voters recalled her by a mere three-​vote margin. Still, her reaction was philosophic: “[T]he democratic process took place, and that is a good process that we have in the United States, and it’s fair.”

Maybe Cochran and his cabal of mayors should keep their shirts on … so to speak. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Pols Pack It In

At long last, it’s over.

Citizens have won. Our rights to initiative and referendum are now immutably safe and secure, forevermore, from disingenuous assault by the powers that be.

All power-​lusting, citizen-​mocking career politicians everywhere have in unanimous concord acceded to the democratic virtue of the citizen initiative process. The binding promissory compacts have been signed, wax-​sealed, stamped, and bar-​coded by all pertinent parties.

As of today, this first day of April, 2011, every obstructionist politico throughout the land has agreed in solemn ecumenical council to desist said class’s hitherto drearily unrelenting efforts to hamstring, handcuff, harry and harass anyone who’d dare try posting ballot questions on important political issues. (We’ve got the proof on video!)

Yep. No more will politicians multiply the arbitrary requirements to foil their attempts to opacify government transparency, as they tried in Utah.

No more will politicians force every petition circulator to wear privacy-​violating ID badges, as they were eager to do in Nebraska.

No more will politicians clog the initiative process with fictitious accusations of wrongdoing, their M.O. in Colorado.

No more will … 

Continue reading “Pols Pack It In”

Categories
government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall

Saving Grandma

Republican legislators in Utah are trying to kill Grandma. Don’t dismiss this as a smear. It’s true.

Only spell it GRAMA, which is an acronym for Utah’s 20-​year old Government Records Access Management Act, Utah’s open government and information access law. A furiously fast four days after legislators first introduced a bill to gut the open records law, it sailed through both legislative chambers and was quickly signed by the governor.

House Bill 477 changes the core of the GRAMA law, mandating that citizens must prove they deserve access to records, rather than the previous rule requiring government officials to show cause for why a document should not be released. The legislation also exempts text messages, emails and voicemails from being disclosed, the better to keep lobbyists and special interests out of the limelight.

Thankfully, Utah has a statewide process of initiative and referendum. Already a petition to put HB-​477 to a referendum is underway. Unfortunately, the task is arduous: The sponsors need 100,000 voters to sign in only 40 days. 

To add extra burden, legislators have passed Senate Bill 165, outlawing citizens from using electronic signatures for just such petitions. 

Now the furious Utah electorate, joined by an angry media, is creating enough heat that politicians are seeing the light. The Governor is calling a special session to repeal HB-​477. And a lawsuit may be filed any day now to strike down the unconstitutional, anti-​democratic SB-165.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Voters Boot Mayoral Marauder

On March 15, Miami-​Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez got the boot, with almost nine out of ten county voters (88 percent) agreeing to get rid of him. The Miami Herald calls the event “the largest recall of a local politician in U.S. history.” Brandon Holmes of Citizens in Charge calls it “the most significant recall election since California ousted former governor Gray Davis in 2003.”

Alvarez was shown the door for larding aides with hefty pay raises (from $185,484 to $206,783, for his chief of staff) and increasing the salaries of other county employees while hiking property taxes 18 percent in the name of preventing layoffs. Meanwhile, the mayor tooled around town in a taxpayer-​subsidized BMW Gran Turismo.

It all seemed like a racket, hardly consistent with the clean-​up-​government platform on which Alvarez had campaigned. The mayor showed further contempt for voters when he tried to stop the recall vote, twice going to court to block it. It also didn’t help when reports surfaced that the mayor had granted paid leaves to a dozen transit workers, at least one of whom used the time to campaign against the recall effort.

Pundits often describe elections as a referendum on the incumbent. They are, but only partly. Voters everywhere need the power to hold an instant referendum on incumbents who have disastrously demonstrated their incompetence or rapacity. Sometimes these guys need to be stopped in their tracks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.