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Home / Washington Business - September/October 2006 / Taming the Initiative Shrew |
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Taming the Initiative Shrew |
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Written On: September/October 2006 |
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Written By: by Charles Henry Thomas |
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The annual migration of people like Tim Eyman toting truck loads of petitions to state capitols is as predictable as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano each March — only these birds are making a killing at it.
Forget about selling logo watches to college frats and sororities; there is money in elections these days even if you have to dress up like an ape or Darth Vader to get on the nightly news.
Eyman has made a comfortable living filing initiatives since
I-695 propelled him into the spotlight in 1999. He sponsored ballot measures legalizing slot machines, requiring performance audits of state agencies, repealing transportation funding, and cutting property taxes with mixed success.
Some of the luster wore off Eyman in 2002 when he confessed to diverting $210,000 from initiative campaigns to his own personal accounts and then got nabbed for $50,000 by the Public Disclosure Commission for lying about it.
While the people’s right to forge law through the ballot box dates back to our early days of statehood, our forefathers would scratch their heads in amazement at the mushrooming industry it has spawned.
Each year various interest groups spend millions gathering signatures. They design slick Web sites to download petitions and often pay signature gatherers to circumvent state legislatures to make laws, cut taxes, or increase spending.
Unions and environmentalists also partake
For example, this year environmental activists will spend millions to defeat a property rights initiative and pass their version of green power. Labor unions unified in the 1950s to kill a right-to-work proposal, and in 1998 joined forces with church groups to pass a minimum wage hike with automatic annual cost-of-living increases. Now Washington has the nation’s highest at $7.63 per hour.
While politicians’ attitudes change about initiatives depending upon the content and who backs or opposes them, they are infuriated by paid signature gathers. They’d love to give these clipboard cowboys the boot, but keep running into the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing the right of free speech.
But there is nothing free about these modern-day signature rustlers standing in front of a grocery store with four or five petitions, corralling shoppers with catchy slogans like, "Sign here for green energy!" They swallow up anywhere from 50 cents to $2 each time you sign. Meanwhile, the average voter has no idea what he just signed or that the fast-talker juggling clipboards just put a buck in his pocket.
Initiatives get politicians’ attention
Cynical as people may be about initiatives and referendums, many believe they are the only way to get elected officials’ attention. For example, in 1993 when the Legislature spent too much and raised taxes, people said enough was enough. Along came Sen. Linda Smith, R-Vancouver, with I-601, the precedent-setting spending limits measure. Voters reigned in state spending — at least for a decade. Today, it is falling apart because lawmakers keep chiseling away at its foundation.
Eyman latched onto the anti-tax mood in 1999. Motorists were fed up with paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars each year to register their cars, trucks and RVs. He was the match that lit the fuse to the power keg, blowing up the motor vehicle excise tax and bringing you $30 car tabs.
Interestingly, neither Smith nor Eyman used paid signature gathers on I-601 or I-795. While both have their admirers and detractors, people respect the grassroots groundswell they’ve mustered. It was that populous uprising for which our forefathers sought to provide safety valves through the initiative and referendum process.
This year, only three major initiatives qualified for the ballot, all of which relied upon paid signature gatherers to one degree or another. Eyman failed to qualify I-917 reinstating $30 car tabs.
While voters will not see I-917 on the November ballot, there will be proposals repealing the newly re-enacted Washington state estate tax (I-920), clarifying property rights (I-933), and forcing utilities to buy electricity for some selected renewable sources (I-937).
Lawmakers out-shrew themselves
Recently, Washington legislators tried to tame the initiative shrew. They thought they’d closed a loophole by requiring that each signed petition be accompanied by the signature of the person asking the people to sign on the dotted line. Sound confusing? It is! The law is so vague that a number of groups are suing to figure out what the Legislature intended.
Challenging the law’s intent may not halt the annual stampede to the Secretary of State’s office, but numbers might. This year, because of the high voter turnout in the 2004 presidential election, an initiative needed 225,000 valid signatures to qualify for the November general election. That’s up from 188,000 the year before. In reality, petition backers need over 300,000 to overcome duplicate signatures and ineligible people who signed on the dotted line.
Since 1993 when I-601 passed, the initiatives in Washington have gone big time — almost as big time as California. It now costs millions to qualify petitions for the ballot and then to pass or defeat them. Pretty soon, if the current trend continues, it will cost hundreds of millions.
Voters have to ask themselves: "Is that what we want?" If it is, then we have to accept the consequences.
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