Tag: initiative

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initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Preparation HH Hornswoggle

Colorado, tax

Tonight, I’ll be anxious for election returns from Colorado on Proposition HH, a measure Democrats in the legislature placed on the ballot to both lower taxes and raise revenue. 

Huh?

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist wrote recently in The Denver Gazette, that the proposition “would result in the largest tax hike in Colorado history.”

Yet, the ballot title begins: “SHALL THE STATE REDUCE PROPERTY TAXES FOR HOMES AND BUSINESSES, INCLUDING EXPANDING PROPERTY TAX RELIEF FOR SENIORS . . . ?”

“Democrats have advertised Prop. HH primarily as a property tax cut that will save homeowners hundreds of dollars per year,” explains Colorado Public Radio’s Andrew Kenney, “which is true.”

But Kenney goes on to plainly present the rest of the story, that HH would also “raise the state spending limits created by TABOR, allowing the government to eventually keep hundreds of millions, and then billions, of dollars more tax money each year instead of refunding it.”

TABOR stands for the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which voters passed by citizen initiative back in 1992. Under TABOR, government spending growth is limited, with excess revenue returned to taxpayers. Prop HH is designed to offer immediately small property tax relief attached to letting the legislature grab much bigger money from not providing refunds in the future.

Norquist correctly dubs it “a bait-and-switch tax hike scheme.”

It’s the usual stock-in-trade of the political class. The difference in Colorado, however, under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, is that politicians are required to ask voters for permission . . . to hornswoggle them in this way. 

Politicians have been asking for higher taxes again and again for years. (Not to mention going to court in a failed attempt to overturn TABOR.)

But voters have the final say. Today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

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initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary

The 6 Percent Solution

Idaho, initiative

The Idaho Supreme Court has stated the obvious.

The question was whether legislation passed by the Republican-dominated Idaho state legislature making it prohibitively difficult to run a successful initiative campaign is consistent with the state constitution.

In August, the court ruled that requiring petitioners to obtain signatures from at least 6 percent of voters in every single legislative district of the state — 35 districts — would usher in “tyranny of the minority.”

It said that the new law “conflicts with the democratic ideals that form the bedrock of the constitutional republic created by the Idaho Constitution, and seriously undermines the people’s initiative and referendum powers enshrined therein.”

As the Idaho Statesman observes, the law would have enabled voters of a single district to prevent a question from reaching the ballot.

The Statesman also smashed the silly argument that the current initiative process somehow burdens specifically rural voters in any quest to post a question.

Under current law, petitioners must obtain signatures from 6 percent of all registered voters in the state and also reach that threshold in at least 18 districts, not all 35 districts. The all-35 mandate would have made the job of running a petition drive massively harder no matter what regions petitioners happen to reside in.

Foes of citizen initiative rights also tend to ignore the fact that getting a question on the ballot hardly constitutes its enactment. Every voter, from whatever part of the state, can then decide Yes or No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall repeal

Voters, Govern Thy Governor

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Covid, emergency powers, Unlock Michigan

Is the epidemic of gubernatorial abuse of power ending in Michigan?

During the last year and a half, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been widely criticized for prescribing and proscribing all manner of conduct in the name of combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whitmer claimed that her authority to do so was justified by the Emergency Powers of Governor Act of 1945. On this basis, she promulgated many silly and counterproductive edicts.

These ranged from commandments to stay at home except for certain urgent forms of sallying forth (a lockdown also mandated in other states) to banning the sale of gardening equipment. Among other injunctions, Executive Order 2020-42 prohibited advertising of sundry “unnecessary” goods and ordered stores to shutter sections selling carpets, paint, furniture, and gardening materials.

In October of 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the 1945 Act unconstitutionally delegated legislative authority. Now voters have weighed in with a citizen initiative. The group Unlock Michigan collected enough valid signatures— “more than 500,000 signatures in just 80 days” — to send a measure repealing the Emergency Powers of Governor Act to the legislature.

Had lawmakers failed to approve the petition, its fate would have been decided by voters at the ballot box. But last week, in a 68 to 40 vote, the Michigan House joined the Senate to certify it — saving a lot of time and money.

In Michigan, a law presented to the legislature thanks to a citizen initiative and then enacted cannot be vetoed by the governor. So that’s it. Governor Whitmer’s access to this autocracy-enabling law is gone. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Amazing Vanished Rights

Governor, Brad Little, Idaho

Suppose you have the right to walk across a room.

Yet you’re legally chained to a chair. 

By your rights, you may get up and walk across the room. But you can’t, because of the chains. You could if only you could. Why, there’s even a document specifying your right to do so. You physically can’t exercise this right; that’s the only problem. 

But your right to walk across the room is enshrined and protected.

Or is it?

In fact, we have no right in the sense of a legal ability to do a certain thing if its exercise is, by law, thwarted. 

Recently, Idaho lawmakers passed and Governor Little signed a law making it almost impossible for citizens to place a question onto the ballot. Until now, Idaho required that 6 percent of registered voters in 18 of 35 legislative districts sign the petition to send a question to ballot. Gratuitously onerous, but at least possible to comply with.

That possibility was a big problem for opponents of citizen initiative rights, however. Hence the new law, requiring signatures from 6 percent of registered voters in each of 35 districts.

Reclaim Idaho challenged the law. The Idaho Supreme Court is currently hearing the case.

According to Reclaim Idaho co-founder Luke Mayville: “If you claim that the people ought to have a right to put something on the ballot [but] make it impossible to exercise that right, it’s not really much of a right at all.”

Do justice, justices.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

You’re Sued!

Arkansas, term limits

Firing politicians is what democracy’s all about.

But politicians don’t like being fired. Even when “You’re fired!” is a signature line. It definitely explains why incumbents tend to oppose term limits. 

As shown in the long history of term limits in my home state, Arkansas. 

In 1992, an all-volunteer petition drive placed the initiative on the ballot and a grassroots campaign beat the Good Ole Boy network and their $500,000 in paid media warnings of “outsiders.” 

The victory sent shockwaves through the Arkansas political establishment; term limits received more YES votes than President-Elect Bill Clinton had garnered in his home state.

Arkansas pols have been at war with term limits ever since. The latest assault came in April, when legislators passed an “emergency” measure now known as Act 951. 

The Act bans people found guilty of minor misdemeanors (trespassing, vandalism, any violation of drug laws) at any time in their lives — even many decades ago — from working as paid petitioners. The new law also limits the pool of petitioners to state residents, something not done for any other political job, or for those carrying Arkansas’s candidate petitions.*

That’s why Arkansas Term Limits, Liberty Initiative Fund, U.S. Term Limits, et al., filed a complaint in the federal Eastern District of Arkansas alleging constitutional rights violations under the legislature’s Act 951. 

“I was never a supporter of term limits until this bunch got in office,” offered Arkansas Times editor Max Brantley in response to our lawsuit, “and gave themselves essentially unlimited terms and set about running roughshod over human rights.”

Cries of “You’re fired!” are coming soon. But first, to pry back petition rights in Arkansas, the catchphrase is, “You’re sued!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* In recent years, similar residency requirements have been unanimously struck down in rulings of the 4th, 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th federal Circuit Courts of Appeal. Earlier this year, a federal judge enjoined enforcement of Maine’s similar law.

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meter / JG

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Shanghaied in Tallahassee

initiative, petition, Florida

How to prevent citizen control of government?

The democracy-loathing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not merely wiping out Hong Kong’s civil liberties, but also aggressively undercutting the limited democratic input citizens previously had. You see, in December of 2019, in the last local elections before the pandemic proscribed the city’s protest movement, fledgling pro-democracy candidates won an incredible 87 percent of the seats. 

So the Chinazis postponed the next election, just to be safe.*

Never a full-fledged one-person/one-vote democracy, Hongkongers only voted for 35 of the 70 Legislative Council seats. But now the CCP is increasing legislative seats to 90 while reducing to just 20 those that voters choose.**

While tyranny may seem another growth industry where China outpaces us, don’t count out our politicians just yet.

Last November, Florida voters decided four citizen initiatives, passing two and defeating two others — including one to make it tougher to pass constitutional amendments. Such “direct democracy” isn’t easy — almost 900,000 Sunshine State voters must sign. Then to pass, Florida amendments require a 60-percent vote.

Yet for the third consecutive session the unfriendly Florida Legislature, dominated by Republicans, wants to make it even more difficult for regular people to communicate, associate, organize and petition an amendment onto the ballot, bypassing the pols:

♦ House Joint Resolution 61 would hike that 60-percent supermajority for passage to 66.7-percent. Should a measure that receives 66.5 percent of the vote lose? 

♦ Senate Bill 1890 would outlaw contributions of greater than $3,000 to the petition phase of the campaign, which usually costs upwards of $5 million. It’s campaign finance “reform” specifically designed to silence citizens by blocking their ability to successfully place an issue before fellow voters.

“[I]t should not be an impossible process,” offered Trish Neely with the League of Women Voters . . .

. . . of Florida, that is. Not Hong Kong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Not to mention the police arresting aspiring pro-democracy candidates.

** The police must now first approve all candidates as being sufficiently pro-China, as well.

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Photo by Elizabeth Jenkins

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