Initiative and Referendum is not about politics. It's about freedom. Mike Ford, Initiative for Texas

The organized special interests have staff and money stockpiled in Austin.  In 2005, according to the Texas Ethics Commission reports they spent over $200 million lobbying 181 Texas legislators.  That's an average of over $1,100,000 per legislator.  These expenditures produced for the special interests over 1,500 new laws last session. No one knows what all of these laws are. And Texas certainly did not need 1,500 new laws.

The organized special interests spent their millions to influence to their advantage a $140 billion biennial budget.  There are many differing special interests, and they want differing things.  That's why they need so many new laws each session.  Most of these 1,500 new laws were a gift, at taxpayer expense, to some organized special interests.  This kind of insider behind-the-scenes looting of the taxpayers' treasury is an exclusive game of organized special interests that goes on in every state capitol.

It is in the nature of government to grow, and to concentrate its power. All organized special interests find this concentration of power convenient, and most aggressively defend and increase the concentration.  Citizens are recognizing that this system increasingly makes their vote a lot less meaningful.  They have started voting less, refusing to play in such a rigged game.  As a result, government power concentrates even more, and we are slowly losing our liberty.

What is needed is a citizen tool for de-concentrating political power. There is such a tool. It is called the initiative.  With this tool citizens can, and have, imposed limitations on their state governments: tax limitation, term limitation, and other limits on government interference into their lives.

The initiative is the people's check on government.  It is also the implementation of our constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment right to petition for redress of grievances.  For the better part of 100 years, citizens in 24 states have enjoyed this right. Texas is one of only three western states where the legislature has refused to implement this right for its citizens.  It has refused despite the fact that Texans are overwhelmingly (74% to 12% - 1998 Rasmussen Research poll) in favor of initiative rights for themselves.

On November 7, 1996, after several months of holding hearing around Texas and listening to extensive citizen and expert testimony, the Texas Senate Interim Committee on Initiative and Referendum (I&R) recommended that "the Texas Legislature adopt a joint resolution requiring submission to the voters of a constitutional amendment to reserve to the people the powers of initiative and referendum."  The Committee recommendations include an impressive array of safeguards, making up a proposal knowledgeable observers call the best Initiative & Referendum proposal in the U.S.

By this act Senators Jane Nelson, Teel Bivins, David Cain, and Tom Haywood joined the millions of other Texans who are asking the Legislature for I&R rights.  These Texans include Governor George W. Bush and Lt. Governor Bob Bullock, U. S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the members of United We Stand -Texas, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), Independent Texans, Texas Association of Concerned Taxpayers, and most of the Texans living in the 237 home-rule cities in Texas with I&R.

This recommendation will now be supported by members of the Texas Legislature who have signed an Initiative for Texas pledge to "support and campaign actively for the enactment of a constitutional amendment providing Texans with rights of Initiative and Referendum" and further pledging, "to co-sponsor such an amendment in the Texas Legislature."

Our Founding Fathers gave us a government structure that protects us from the "tyranny of the majority."  It protects us from the tyranny of the majority by writing into constitutional law guarantees for our individual rights.  This is part of the "republican" form of government enjoyed by all Americans, including those living in the 24 states having the right of initiative.  Unfortunately, there is a tiny, but persistent group of Texans who have read, and misunderstood, our U. S. and Texas constitutions.  They think our individual rights are protected, not by the guarantees in our written constitution, but by the fact that elected representatives vote for us.  This is simply not true.  All two hundred ninty million Americans live under a republican form of government. Unfortunately only one hundred thirty-five million live in states with initiative rights.  Texans have been denied this right by their own legislature.

If you would like to be a part of history and help bring initiative rights to Texas, please write and call your State Legislator asking her/him to commit to work for initiative rights for Texans.

"All political power is inherent in the people,
and all free governments are founded on their authority,
and instituted for their benefit."
Texas Constitution, Article 1