See HB 1696 "Facilitating the statewide initiative and referendum processes ..."
Nice title, but what it offers is the "Citizens Initiative Review Commission", a group of political appointees
demographically representative of the state as a whole, who will study and evaluate ballot measures through a quasi-legislative hearing process, and to make the panels' findings public by inclusion in the voters' pamphlet.Oh, please. The sponsors apparently think that we voters are too stupid to figure out how to vote by ourselves and that we need political hacks and bureaucrats to tell us how to vote.
If voters can't be trusted to vote on initiatives, why should they be trusted to vote for legislators? After all, they didn't display very good judgment in electing the sponsors of this bill, who, by the way, also go around sponsoring other bills without having any evidence to back up their claims.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 25, 2007 03:18 PM | Email ThisThe Democrats use the R behind his name to claim bi-partisanship. Thanks a lot, Mr. Jarrett. If you are going bi- on us, at least do it with a conservative issue.
Posted by: swatter on January 25, 2007 03:27 PMWhen I was ranking member on the State Government committee, this bill didn't go anywhere because they knew I would strenuously oppose it. I repeatedly told the proponents that if they wanted an "independent" panel to review initiatives and provide "objective" commentary, it sure shouldn't be organized or funded by the government. I recommended they go to media groups like the Allied Daily Newspapers, Washington Newspaper Publishers Association, and Washington Association of Broadcasters for funding, pick panel members at random like juries, and keep the state out of the process entirely.
This type of effluence from Olympia should be grounds for immediate removal from office for lack of fundamental understanding of our history, founding and governing documents, resulting in monumental incompetence.
Posted by: JCM on January 25, 2007 05:11 PMI'm sure Queen Christine and her super-majorities hope so.
Posted by: MJC on January 25, 2007 07:26 PMHB 1696 allows politicians to handpick a bunch of 'super citizens' who will tell us what to think and how to vote and we, the taxpayers, get to pay for this boondoggle. Dumbest anti-initiative bill they've got (and there's lots to choose from).
This Tuesday, January 30th in Olympia at 1:30 pm is a public hearing on all the anti-initiative bills coming out of the state senate:
Government Operations & Elections - 01/30/07 1:30 pm
Senate Full Committee
Senate Hearing Rm 2
J.A. Cherberg Building
Olympia, WA
Public Hearing:
1. SB 5181 - sponsored by Democrat Jim Kastama - Requiring signature gatherers to wear identification. (US Supreme Court already found this to be unconstitutional because it makes people who exercise their First Amendment rights gathering signatures subject to harassment and intimidation)
2. SB 5182 - sponsored by Democrat Jim Kastama -- Requiring signature gatherers to sign initiative and referendum petitions. (Why should perfectly valid signatures of voters be thrown in the garbage if the person who gathered those signatures forgot to fill out the back of the petition? This bill says that the Secretary of State MUST reject petitions, and thus REJECT valid signatures of interested voters, based on the actions of the person gathering the signatures. The 9th Circuit struck down a 1993 law that required the names and addresses of signature gatherers to be publicly reported. They ruled that citizens who ask voters to sign petitions have a right to anonymity. Citizens should not be deterred from exercising their political free speech rights because of a legitimate fear of retaliation caused by laws like this. Remember, the Secretary of State checks the signatures of voters and makes sure that only valid signatures count.)
3. SB 5356 - Prohibiting payment of petition signature gatherers on a per-signature basis. (Legislature passed a bill just like this in 1993 and the court ruled that it blatantly "violated citizens' fundamental freedom of political speech protected by the First Amendment." Why should the 2007 Legislature pass a law the court has already rejected?)
4. SB 5392 - sponsored by Democrat Jeanne Kohl-Welles - Increasing the initiative filing fee. (A 1900% increase. This bill radically increases the cost to file an initiative and is clearly intended to deter citizens from petitioning their government for change. The huge number of signatures required to qualify for the ballot already provides a big enough hurdle)
5. SJR 8205 - sponsored by Democrat Ken Jacobsen - constitutional amendment repealing initiative process. (Ken Jacobsen is the most honest elected official in Olympia on this issue. He recognizes that the right to initiative is guaranteed by the state constitution and that any changes to the initiative process can only be done by constitutional amendment. Which means getting 2/3's in the state house, 2/3's in the state senate, and a vote of the people. Give him points for not hiding his views - he openly opposes having the citizens' voice heard in important debates over public policy and he's openly pushing to take our rights away from us. At least he's honest about his position. The sponsors and co-sponsors of the other anti-initiative bills skulk and hide and obfuscate their opposition to the entire initiative process and secretly try to gut it by passing anti-initiative laws that de facto repeal the initiative process by regulating it to death. Yet, the politicians who employ this below-the-radar-screen "regulate to death" strategy have the audacity to claim "I support the initiative process, I'm just trying to make it better with Senate Bill XXXX." It's a load of bull.
The people simply do not support removing the important check-and-balance of the initiative process from the books.
Eyman got himself notoriety for the license tab initiative. Local government, especially tiny jurisdictions, were devastated after losing this income stream. So, initiatives were given a bad name especially after a couple more passed.
Because the cash cow wasn't there, most Ds and some Rs openly complained. So, I guess this is an offshoot.
The best excuse I have heard from the politicians that makes any sense is that "I was elected to vote and by golly, I am going to vote the way I want without interference." And truthfully, that is almost a paraphrase of two local politicians' (one R and one D) comments after relishing their ability to belittle citizens at public hearings.
Posted by: swatter on January 26, 2007 06:59 AMYou (apparently) make a decent bit of coin from sponsoring initiatives - good on you for figuring out an angle on the system.
But holding yourself out as some kind of champion of taxpayers? Maybe that's just so much puffery.
Could you share a few thoughts here on a couple of bills that DON'T bear directly on you livelihood? I found this out on the internet. These two bills address car tab (and other) taxes, citizens rights, Sound Transit, and the single-subject rule in the constitution: all subjects with which you have some familiarity.
"SB 5282 and HB 1396 are two bills that would combine the ST and RTID ballot measures into a single measure. Each of these bills also contains provisions designed to 1) circumvent the protections against logrolling the constitution affords, and 2) legislate out of existence the availability of the judiciary for vindicating our constitution's prohibition against multiple legislative subjects in a single measure."
So Tim, care to share your thoughts about these companion bills, especially in terms of taxpayers' rights? TIA!
Are you so quick to condemn Hastert, Reid, etc. when they get cush jobs for their family members and pay them to politic and lobby for them using taxpayer money? No, I didn't think so. Their corruption is worse than anything the I-man has done.
So, just because you don't like the message, don't kill the messenger like the Clintons did and do.
Posted by: swatter on January 26, 2007 09:14 AMHe's busy in Oly this am. I'm very serious about my request that he comment on the bills above. I think they are flagrantly anti-taxpayer, and I'm curious if Eyman would agree publicly with me on that. Indeed, it would be great if he weighed in with cogent and hard-hitting remarks against these two bills.
How about you swatter? Please take a look at these two bills and tell me if you see ANYTHING good for citizens in them. Even better, explain why you think they are profoundly anti-taxpayer, anti-citizen, and in all respects statist (that's my view, anyway).
I read the digest of HB1696 and didn't find a whole lot good in it. When you have Dunshee and Sells signing on with McDermott (I still don't know if he is related to the other), I knew it was a bill not worth reviewing.
And it goes back to the role of government and its implemenation. The bill relies on an "impartial" and "independent" panel to review the initiatives in a quasi-judicial format and make their legal decisions part of the record.
Seeing as how even the Supremes are as impartial as a Cowboy fan on Thanksgiving, how can impartial and independent people even be found and located? There are no such animals.
But the concept is good. I personally would like to see someone give me an honest rundown of initiatives or any ballot measure. Add candidate qualifications to that list, too. But, think about it. Who is going to pick these people? Yep, a politician and by definition, it is corrupted.
Posted by: swatter on January 26, 2007 12:44 PMIn the most recent post, 'swatter' wrote, "...how can impartial and independent people even be found and located? There are no such animals. But the concept is good. I personally would like to see someone give me an honest rundown of initiatives or any ballot measure....But, think about it. Who is going to pick these people? Yep, a politician and by definition, it is corrupted."
I'm glad people have noticed this bill. It's a good one. Some postings don't seem to have gotten into the guts of it. This bill proposes that the panelists studying initiatives are people just like yourselves--a random microcosm of the public. They're not appointed by politicians. The panelists would be selected in roughly the same way we choose juries, except that they'd be compensated fairly for their time, ensuring a much broader cross-section of the public.
Moreover, this bill creates an oversight board for the ongoing commission's work. Half that board's members are drawn from the same citizens who serve on the citizen panels. And they're not appointed by politicians--they're named by the citizen panelists themselves. So the panels would be *our*--the people's--panels overseen principally by us, not electeds or political appointees.
Like any idea, it's good politics to debate it. But let's debate the actual proposal--not a misrepresntation of it. The proponents of this bill, including the legislators backing it, are calling for MORE citizen involvement and deliberation, so it's probably a non-starter to say this bill reflects a lack of trust in the public. Anyone who wants the read story on this bill should check it out at www.cirwa.org.
Posted by: John Gastil on January 26, 2007 04:18 PMBut it's a bad idea for the government to be involved in this. Some of the members of the proposed panel are appointed by politicians. I don't think it's legitimate to use public funds to give political appointees a larger podium than they already have to advise the citizens on how to vote on issues.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on January 26, 2007 04:30 PMI strongly support greatly increasing the amount of debate and public discourse about ALL ballot measures - initiatives and also tax & spend propositions sponsored by local governments. One of the lessons we need to learn from the very harmful Seattle Monorail Project episode is that the public needs a lot more good information than self-interested proponents give during election campaigns.
I can't think of much harm that a political appointee could do for/to our community by leading discussions and fostering discourse on upcoming ballot measures. That'd at least be a step towards getting issues aired, which does not happen now. What happens now is self-interested campaign promoters pitch past each other, blaring at targeted blocks of voters.
As long as the public gets to raise issues that the pro and con sides actually debate and provide information on, maybe it would not be so bad if some were political appointees.
It's the political appointees with taxing authority that are a sick aberration from our Anglo-American jurisprudential tradition. Those are the ones we need to take action against. THAT is the kind of authority no political appointee should be afforded.
The current system is inadequate. Look at how the March Seattle City ballot measure is coming together. Who thinks they have enough information about either of the two questions now? Who thinks they are going to get good information about total costs, ultimate design features, taxpayer protections (if any), etc. between now and the vote?
The commission will use a survey research outfit to select--at random--voters from across the state to serve on the panels, hear pro/con arguments, and write a cogent page that goes in the voter guide. The deliberating--and the statement on initiatives--is done by people like you and me, randomly chosen. There are *no* political appointees on those panels. The citizens are not, as Eyman suggests, "hand picked." Just not true.
It's important to have the commission to oversee the process. And let me stress something that hasn't come up in this discussion: the bill sets up a *clear* evaluation process for each year's panels, and that evaluation is done by--you guessed it--everyday citizens who come from those same citizen panels--*not* by political appointees.
So, in summary, the commission is 50% citizens, the staff draw random-sample panels that are 100% citizens, and then the whole process is evaluated each year by the same citizens. That's us. This is *our* process.
Again, I appreciate that there are details to this mechanism, but it's really quite a well thought-out proposal. I notice that some posters, like Glynn who wrote the comment before this one, see merit in it, in spite of the details that are getting confused in this comment stream.
And let me say again--I'm glad people are talking about it; the whole spirit of this proposal is to encourage deliberation and debate, so let's do it. But before we get too far into this, let's make sure we've all got the details down. Isn't that what blogs are for? Picking over the details? (-:
Posted by: John Gastil on January 26, 2007 08:10 PMYou declined an invitation to address whether or not SB 5282 and HB 1396 are good from the perspective of taxpayers. I understand a lot of Republican Party functionaries are supporting these BECAUSE the have statist bents. Perhaps that is how you swing as well.
The fact that Eyman is not speaking out about these might well be a good indicator of some bad things about him. It suggests he is out for NO. 1 only. These two bills are Sound Transit's. It wants these to grease the skids for it to get unlimited additional taxing authority. RTID would be there too -- with massive car tab taxes.
Why would Eyman not howl against these? Or put on a gorilla suit and pound his chest about how they would hurt taxpayers and taxpayers' rights? One answer is that he truly cares about making money off the political system as it currently stands, and that taxpayers' rights to him are nothing but a marketing tag line.
What say you swatter? Maybe Tim'll prove me wrong, and speak out against these . . ..
Posted by: Roger Thornhill on January 27, 2007 08:01 AMVoters should not be presented with ballot measures calling for vast tax increases for shifting project lists. That is what monorail was, and light rail is. I'll bet T.E. is getting paid by some group that would get rich off of that kind of open-ended ballot measure. That would explain why he would sponsor initiatives claiming it would be good for voters to have to approve new taxes . . . .
Posted by: pigskin on January 27, 2007 03:40 PM