Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Sen. Jack Harper is introducing SCR 1001, titled Statewide Initiatives; Legislative Consideration. It is a constitutional amendment that, if passed, would go in front of voters.

The amendment would first of all remove the Latin “centum” from Article IV of the state constitution and replaced it with the more ‘Merkin “cent.” Oh, then it rips the heart out of the initiative process. Under the proposed amendment, Article IV, Part 1, Section 1-2 would read (the italics are the new, not so improved, language):

(2) Initiative power. The first of these reserved powers is the initiative. Under this power ten per centum cent of the qualified electors shall have the right to propose any measure, and fifteen per cent shall have the right to propose any amendment to the constitution, except that, within three years before the initiative petition is filed, any proposed measure or amendment must first be introduced in the legislature and is subject to legislative consideration and enactment.

Lovely.

In other words, the people can’t propose a resolution unless the legislature has proposed it first. Even better, here would be his new language in subsection 9:

…and the official text of a state measure or amendment to the constitution shall consist only of the full text of the proposition as introduced in, or as amended by, the legislature pursuant to subsection (2)…

So, not only must the initiative be something that the legislature has proposed, it must be something exactly like what the legislature has proposed. Nice.

I don’t know much about Harper’s motives here, but this proposal demonstrates an ignorance of the history of our state’s constitution and the whole purpose of the initiative process. The idea was that the people can propose laws when the legislature refuses to take any action. Saying that the legislature needs to take action first violates the reasons for having an initiative process in the first place. It also doesn’t say much for Harper’s respect for the voters.

Harper’s bill only has one co-sponsor, Majority Whip John Huppenthal, so I don’t know yet if there is any actual excitement from the Republican caucus on this issue. The funny thing about it is, Republicans did pretty well with initiatives this year, anti-immigration measures that were dead when they hit the governor’s desk all passed. They have been bragging about that even. This may come from anger over “liberal” measures that have passed over the last decade or so, such as medical marijuana, clean elections and the recent measure on hog farming. Near as I can tell, none of these were proposed in the legislature at all. Maybe they are looking at stopping things like this.

If Harper manages to cajole enough of his fellow Senators to pass this (by the way, any Democrat that votes for this sucks and I will be happy to say so on this blog), I hope that the people see what is going on here and turn it away at the ballot box. We still have the power to strike bad constitutional amendments, Harper hasn’t taken that from us yet.