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April 18, 2005
The Problem with Ballot Initiatives
After spelling out several serious problems with the ballot initiative called the California Live Within Our Means Act, sponsored Governor Schwarzenegger, today's Los Angeles Times lead editorial makes this observation.
Little of this is likely to be debated rationally or in any kind of detail during the campaign for a special statewide election Schwarzenegger wants to call for the fall. That's the problem with ballot measures, and why their overuse constricts and distorts state government. Voters must take whatever language the authors of the ballot measure give them. There is no hearing process, no negotiation, no fine-tuning, no formal legal analysis, no chance of correcting an inadvertent error. Such an error was one reason that Schwarzenegger had to pull his proposed public employees pension reform initiative. The measure would have cut off disability and death benefits to police and firefighters and their survivors. [Emphasis added]
Truer words have seldom been written. This is also the reason that petitions for such ballet initiatives should not be signed. Once on the ballot, there is no longer opportunity for the give and take that makes good legislation. In fact, there is little real debate. Those for the initiative and those against immediately adopt public relations campaign styles that guarantee there will be no rational debate. One of the more dangerous things that happens when something is found wrong in such an initiative is that its proponents continue to campaign for it saying that the error is a detail of no consequence or that it can be corrected later. Most often, the voters are just stuck with what they voted for and if a court overturns a bad or unconstitutional initiative, the proponents cry foul.
The California legislative and executive branches are currently hog tied by voter approved initiatives. Proposition 13 makes it next to impossible to raise any taxes. Proposition 98 requires an ever-increasing portion of the state budget to go to schools. And there are literally dozens of others that limit government's ability to adjust to changing economic conditions and priorities.
The other thing that ballot initiatives do is take the responsibility for good legislation away from the legislators. As citizens we need to make sure they do their job and not pass it on to us because we will almost surely mess it up.
Posted by DuaneSmith at April 18, 2005 11:05 AM | Read more on Current Events |
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