Dan Walters: Is Initiative Process the Cause or Result of State’s Malaise?
The old philosophical argument over whether the chicken or the egg first emerged from the primordial ooze has a political counterpart in California’s circular debate over the initiative process.
Is directly presenting proposed laws and constitutional amendments to voters a safety valve by which they can do what the Legislature is unwilling or unable to do, the cause of the Capitol’s endemic inability to function effectively, or, perhaps, both a symptom of our political malaise and a cure that worsens the disease?