Take Initiative: Think Before You Sign

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian, October 2006

What We Vote On Has A Lot To Do

With Whether You Sign That Initiative Petition

It is a ritual in Oregon politics as predictable as falling leaves, freezing nights and autumn rains: the arrival of a new batch of initiative petitions. This fall is no exception.

At this writing, a total of 81 potential initiatives have been filed with the office of the Oregon secretary of state. By comparison, 2004 saw a total of 143 initiatives filed and 2002 experienced 152.

Initiatives—the right of the people to take their legislative proposals directly to the ballot—are the mother’s milk of Oregon politics.

Oregon boasts the oldest initiative process in the country. It dates back to 1902. The initiative system does not exist in every state, even today, and in those states where it does exist it is sometimes called “The Oregon System” in honor of the state that founded it.

In May, the Oregon System gets another road test. Potential ballot titles are being reviewed now by the secretary of state and attorney general in preparation for sending them out with signature gatherers in an attempt to get enough signatures from qualified voters to place them on the ballot.

Not all will succeed, but some will certainly qualify. The outcome could shape the State for decades to come.

At this point, I think we can pretty confidently predict that there will be at least one measure and maybe more dealing with tax reform. If you want to choke off government revenues further as a means of limiting the size of government, you may have your chance. If you prefer a straightforward spending cap, that may also make the ballot. Not in a service-cutting mood? Maybe a measure to authorize additional development fees to be collected on behalf of schools will catch your interest.

Oregonians in Action, which successfully sponsored Measure 37 on the last ballot and upset the Oregon apple cart on the land use front, is betting you want more of the same. Several groups think you want to impose additional restrictions on the ability of the government to take private property (with compensation) for public purposes. Anti-abortion folks believe that restricting abortion is on the electorate’s mind, while those concerned about rising healthcare costs are convinced you’ll like a ballot measure that caps attorney’s fees in medical malpractice suits as one solution to the problem.

Many of the sponsors of these measures view the initiative process as a game—albeit a game with serious consequences for large segments of the State. Most backers of initiatives, if pressed, would claim that they are pursuing ballot measure solutions because they have been shut out of the mainstream process. (Players within “the system” counterclaim that the ideas presented by initiative promoters are too loony to deserve serious consideration. Time will tell.)

Personally, I have my doubts about the use of the initiative process. As a political junky I find it amusing, in the way reality TV is amusing: You can’t really believe that there are people who really think and act like that, but since you’re seeing it with your own eyes, you can’t entirely discount what you seeing.

There are, of course, rare exceptions to every rule, and I readily acknowledge that that the initiative process has had moments of greatness. The extension of the right to vote to women was one such moment. Establishment of the 8-hour work day was another. So was creation of the state’s workers compensation system, the establishment of compulsory education for children and voter initiatives to improve funding for institutions serving the deaf, the blind and the mentally ill.

I’ll even go so far as to say that the initiative process was an appropriate voter response to a couple of contemporary issues such as run-away property taxes and a general reining in the state’s out-of-control land-use system. Lawmakers had plenty of warning that both these issues were stirring and chose to do nothing long before the people took the issue into their own hands.

But those are the rare exceptions. The vast majority of initiatives are simply a waste of paper, ink and voter attention. Voters must concur since they’ve passed barely1 in 3 of the initatives and referenda forwarded to them. It seems Oregonians have little patience for mundane questions such as whether to issues bonds for various counties, how much to pay legislators, whether to reorganize state and local government and imposing regulations on fishing. By and large, these issues don’t shake state government and Oregon society to its foundations, and they are probably better left to the discretion of legislators.

That brings me to the present round of initiatives petitions, which are going to start circulating in the next few months. My hope is this: When confronted with a request to sign an initiative petition, by all means please do so if you think the subject at hand is a “front burner” issue of statewide importance that warrants a vote. But before you sign, please consider that every valid signature on an initiative petition is one step closer to a significant investment of state and local resources.

Your signature is worth something. So is your time as a voter, and so are the resources which will have to be directed toward finding out the answer to the ballot questions presented.

Before you put your name on the bottom line, make sure you are certain that getting the answer is worth the price of asking voters the question.