Citizens in Charge

A recent editorial in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News takes a shot at California’s much-maligned initiative process, claiming Utah’s highly restricted ballot initiative process to be superior. Much of the blame for California’s current financial woes has been misdirected at the state’s ballot initiative process, and the historic Proposition 13 property tax limitation in particular.

Paul Jacob and Dan Walters point out the innocence of Prop 13, and the initiative process in general, noting the irresponsibility of California’s political elite in creating the budget mess.

That innocence is lost on the Deseret News. The solution to California’s problems, so says that paper, is simply to restrict the ballot initiative process to the point where mere citizens are incapable of using it, saying “Some have criticized Utah lawmakers for making it difficult to place initiatives on the ballot here. But while they may have done so to prevent any usurpation of their own authority, it is clearly better to set tough requirements than to open the ballot up to the whims of various factions that exist among the public.”

That Utah lawmakers have made it difficult to put initiatives on the ballot is certainly true. Citizens running a ballot initiative have to deal with both a geographic distribution requirement and a residency requirement, making the barriers to the ballot sky high. Similar restrictions have been struck down by federal courts in other states. Just last year the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a residency requirement in neighboring Arizona, Utah’s previous and more restrictive distribution requirement was struck down in 1998, and a distribution requirement almost identical to Utah’s current law was struck down in Nevada four years later.

The current Utah restrictions haven’t been challenged in court, but they likely will.

Someone should have told the News that restricting voters’ access to ballot initiatives and control of their government isn’t something to brag about. The fact is that due to all the restrictions Utahans have only passed two laws by initiative in the past decade. And while Utah does not give its citizens the power to amend their own constitution by initiative as in California, the Utah legislature has amended the state constitution sixteen times since 2000.

California’s ballot initiative process may not be perfect, but Utah’s restrictions to citizen-powered government hardly make it the place to look for reform ideas.