Initiative for Texas Information Bulletin #15
The first item is from the Wall Street
Journal. The other two
are courtesy of Dane Walters at Initiative& Referendum Institute.
======================
The Oregon Tax Trail
Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2003
Anyone else notice how a stunning repudiation of
a pro-tax ballot initiative in Oregon Tuesday became
a non-story literally overnight?
Up to the morning of the vote on Measure 28 --
which asked for a hike in income taxes to stave off
$310 million in budget cuts -- some polls showed the
measure passing and the pundit class was busy
heralding Oregon as a national bellwether.
But when Oregon's voters turned out in record numbers
to kill Measure 28 by a hefty 54%-46% margin this week,
suddenly it became a local story. The rejection of Measure 28
is all the more remarkable in that it came despite a well-funded,
highly organized pro-tax campaign that enjoyed both the support
of the state's public employees unions and their echo chamber
in the press.
Don't take our word for it. In an election-day interview with National
Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation," Colin Fogerty of Oregon Public
Broadcasting described the pro-tax effort as follows:
"This was a fairly sophisticated grassroots campaign by social service
agencies and schools and supporters of state services that really
sent the word out that these cuts will be fairly drastic, and there were
a series of news stories on our station and television stations and
the newspapers about just how dramatic these cuts are going to be.
And literally there will be frail seniors turned out of nursing homes,
and literally there will be a quarter fewer state troopers on the road,
and universities will be cut."
Translation: Frighten the bejeebers out of folks by telling them that
unless they agree to higher taxes, government is going to shut down
the prisons and throw grandma out in the snow. As Tom Cox of the
Oregon Libertarian Party put it in an op-ed last week for the
Statesman Journal: "The state of Oregon has 47,000 employees. . . .
But the 200 employees we find to lay off are state police officers?"
As bad as these scare tactics were, worse still was how they
obscured a fundamental point: Voting down Measure 28 didn't
cut spending. It only cut the increase in spending. The
Portland-based Cascade Policy Institute points out that
notwithstanding the $310 million that will now have to be slashed,
state discretionary spending will be up 5.5% over the last budget cycle.
We're not denying that Oregon faces a cash crunch. Some of this
can be attributed to the collapse of the high-tech sector. But most
of it is because Oregon politicians overspent in the first three quarters
of the budget cycle, part of a spending pattern during the 1990s that
has outpaced both population growth and inflation. The political lesson
of Measure 28 is that when the budget issue is framed in terms of
higher taxes, voters don't understand why government should be
exempt from the same spending discipline the rest of us live by.
"I'm a normal person and when I don't have enough money I have to
change my habits," 26-year-old Heather Bryan told the AP, explaining
her vote against the measure. "Government should be the same
way."
How's that for a bellwether?
======================
Interesting Factoid about I&R from "Democratic
Delusions:
The Initiative Process in America," Richard Ellis,
University Press of Kansas (Page 227)
"The U.S. constitution has been amended 27 times in over two hundred
years, whereas the average current state constitution has existed for one
hundred years and has been amended about 120 times. Only nineteen
states still have their original constitution, and a few states like Georgia
and Louisiana have gone through ten or more constitutions. The frequent
amending of state constitutions, moreover, is not due solely or even mostly
to the initiative process. The longest and most amended constitution
belongs to Alabama (220,000 words and over 600 amendments in a
hundred years), a state that does not possess the initiative power.
California has the second most amended state constitution
(493
amendments between 1879 and 1997), but less than one-tenth of those
amendments came from citizen initiatives. Every state constitution in
the nation has been amended far more often by the legislature than by
initiative. Even in Colorado, where over 40 percent of the constitutional
amendments submitted to the voters have come through the initiative process,
the actual impact of initiatives on the constitution is diminished
because the success rate of legislative amendments is so much
higher than that of initiated amendments."
======================
The Latest on the Drug Czar's Involvement in I&R Campaigns:
This election cycle marked a turning point in how the Federal Government
involves itself in I&R campaigns. Contrary to previous election cycles
where the government's involvement was limited to "educational"
efforts, in
this election cycle taxpayer dollars were spent advocating a specific vote
on a ballot measure. This has raised concerns as to if this involvement
is legal - the use of tax dollars advocating a specific vote outcome on
a statewide ballot measure. The Institute as you know takes absolutely
NO position on any ballot measure or issue appearing on the ballot but
we are very interested in studying this issue in greater detail so as to
ascertain for future elections as to what is acceptable and legal
behavior by the Federal Government and what is not.
The following excerpts from a January 28, 2003 press release from the
Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) will give you a very interesting update
as to the status of their complaint against the Drug Czar's involvement
in the last election cycle. Amazing enough, the Drug Czar claimed that
they are "immune" from state campaign finance laws. This claim
of
immunity adds another dimension to this controversy. Not only is the
legality of whether or not the Federal Government can spend tax dollars
advocating a specific vote on a ballot measure at issue, the question
of whether or not they are legally obligated to adhere to state campaign
finance laws is now on the table.
- - - - - - - -
Excerpt below is from press release from Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)
January 28, 2003
Drug Czar Defies Nevada Election Officials;
Refuses to Disclose Money Spent Against Marijuana Initiative
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- White House "Drug Czar" John Walters today
refused to report how much money he spent campaigning against Question 9,
Nevada's November 2002 marijuana initiative. Walters' refusal came
in response to a written request from Nevada Secretary of State
Dean Heller that he explain his failure to file campaign finance reports
as required by Nevada law. In a Jan. 27 letter to Heller, Walters' office
claimed he was "immune" from Nevada's campaign finance law "as a
federal officer acting within the scope of duties, including speaking out
about the dangers of illegal drugs." Heller's Jan. 14 letter to Walters,
issued in response to a complaint filed by the Marijuana Policy Project,
reminded Walters that Nevada statutes require "the reporting of
contributions and expenses for every person or group of persons organized
formally or informally who advocates the passage or defeat of a question
or group of questions on the ballot at any election."
Walters flew to Nevada twice to campaign against Question 9,
traveling around the state in a motorcade with a security detail
to speak at anti-Question 9 events. For example, as reported in the
Oct. 12 Las Vegas Review-Journal, he told a gathering of reporters
and law-enforcement officials that the measure was a "con" and
"insulting to the voters of the state." He openly acknowledged
the
political nature of his trip, saying in the Oct. 11 Review-Journal that
he was there "to challenge this ballot initiative." The Oct. 23
Chicago
Tribune and the Nov. 5 Wall Street Journal reported similar comments.
Walters also authorized a series of anti-marijuana television
commercials, which saturated Nevada airwaves in the two months
prior to the election.