Citizens in Charge

Yesterday, an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee by Justine Sarver of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center urged California legislators to clampdown on the state’s initiative and referendum process by passing a number of new restrictions on the rights of Golden State citizens to petition their government.

In February of this year Citizens in Charge Foundation gave Boulder City, Nevada council member Linda Strickland the Lilburne Award for her work defending local citizens from frivolous lawsuits filed against them by their own city government. The city doesn’t seem to appreciate the citizens actually utilizing their First Amendment initiative rights.

This news article in Las Vegas City Life is from last month but provides a bit of an update on the situation in Boulder City:

Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund had a good piece in Saturday’s paper on threats to citizen initiative rights in Colorado and around the country:

The first time I spoke with Janine Hansen was in 2009, while she was making one of her regular trips from her home in Elko to the Nevada State Capitol in Carson City””it’s a 5 hour drive one way if it doesn’t snow. Janine made that drive several times a week throughout the 2009 legislative session in her effort to convince lawmakers not to undermine Nevada’s initiative process by instituting a restrictive geographic distribution requirement for qualifying petitions. Now, two years later, her fight just may result in victory.

Our May 2011 Lilburne Award winner Thad Tecza just so happened to be one of the panelists at our event in Denver, CO last month. Citizens in Charge Foundation president Paul Jacob presented him with the award at the end of the event.

While legislatiors in Colorado, Utah, and California work to restrict their constituents’ access to the ballot initiative process, New York Senators voted Tuesday in favor of a constitutional amendment aimed at giving citizens more power by creating an initiative and referendum process in the state.

The Los Angeles Police Commission voted Tuesday to kill the city’s red light enforcement camera program, unanimously rejecting arguments that the cameras increase safety.

If you weren’t able to make it to Denver for our big event a couple weeks ago make sure you check out videos of the event on our YouTube channel. The keynote speakers and panelists were great. We just posted the full version of our panel discussion. Where else can you see John Fund and Joe Trippi at the same event…agreeing on something? Check it out.

Thirty-three years ago today Californians passed Proposition 13 through the citizen initiative process, and forever changed the tax system in the state.

Jon Fleischman of Flashreport has a column today about this influencial piece of citizen legislation:

We now know that “Pubulus” represents the collected works of the founding fathers James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton were the authors of the Federalist Papers, and that “Brutis,” “Centinel” and the “Federalist Farmer” represent the works of anti-federalists such as Patrick Henry. At the time of the debate over ratification of the US Constitution, the fundamental document of our nation’s government, the true identities of all these men weren’t known. Citizens were forced to [gasp] decide the issues based on the merit of the arguments made, not the perception of the people making the arguments.

Last week, Citizens in Charge Foundation co-hosted a transpartisan panel in Denver, CO to discuss the various attacks on Colorado’s initiative process.

After the panel was done we chatted briefly with Mr. Trippi on why he thought initiative & referendum rights are so important for citizens in holding their government accountable.

Current San Francisco law prohibits the Mayor and members of the Board of Supervisors from altering or repealing voter-approved laws, but city lawmakers may consider passing what amounts to a “Cut the Voters Out Act.”