Citizens in Charge

Citizens in New York are looking for ways to reform the state’s political process.

State Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio, D-Queens, and Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer, R-Amherst have introduced legislation to enact an initiative and referendum process in New York.

Today Charles Roda writes an editorial on the why voters should embrace the process. He argues the state’s current system is broken:

One difficult solution to the corruption and financial mess in Albany would be to allow citizens to collect the required number of signatures, and then put critical issues on the ballot for voters to accept or reject. This is called the initiative process. An alternative is to give voters the right to reject all or parts of legislation passed by the politicians, by direct ballot after signatures have been collected. This is called the referendum process.

Roda also highlights one of the great strengthens of the ballot initiative process is to bring up legislation that would usually not make it through the legislature:

Types of legislation that could be passed by the initiative process include: enacting term limits and court reforms; requiring voter approval for all new debt taken on by public authorities; requiring corporations receiving tax subsidies to make certain employment guarantees; enacting property tax reform; requiring “sunlight” on all state union contracts, contractor bids and awards, and nonprofit contracts; and making new rules granting taxpayers more say in determining public employee salaries and benefits.

Read the article here: New York Needs An Initiative and Referendum Process

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