Chair:
The chair calls Mike Ford with the Texans for Initiative and
Referendum organization
Ford:
My name is Mike Ford. I
am a businessman living in
Austin
.
I serve as chairman of Texans for Initiative and Referendum, a
volunteer group. It has one
mission --- which is to see that binding initiative and referendum (I & R) is
brought to Texans for statewide issues.
Many
Texans are familiar with initiative and referendum because hundreds of Texas
home-rule cities have it. In Austin,
where I live, it was most recently used when the city council decided to
build a baseball stadium for Martin Stone, the owner of the Phoenix
Firebirds --- with taxpayer money. They
didn't want to put the issue up for voter approval so they labeled the bond
issue for the stadium an emergency measure. That
way it didn't need voter approval.
Nobody's
gone to jail for this little scam; but, fortunately, Austin,
being a home-rule city with the right of referendum, the citizens were able
to say “we don't think so”. The
citizens collected about 20,000 signatures to force the issue onto the
ballot. Martin Stone folded
first, saying he always thought the people should vote on it. Then
the city council caved, and put the issue on the ballot --- where it went
down by a vote of two to one. If
Austin
hadn't had I & R, there would be an emergency baseball stadium under
construction in Austin
.
Texans, however, do not have I & R rights on a statewide basis. I
believe we need these rights on a statewide basis.
I found Barbara Vincent's reasons about right of redress very
compelling. But to me the most
compelling reason we need I & R is that power tends to concentrate, and government concentrates
power coercively.
All
organized groups are interested in concentration of power, because it's so
very convenient to deal with one power point: one national legislature
that's running everything, and dividing up one and a half trillion dollars
of our money --- or one state legislature that's dividing up many tens of billions of our
money. Organized interests much
prefer the existing system (no I & R) where they only need influence a
small number of people who all meet in one place --- basically out of the
public’s view.
So
power continues to concentrate. We've seen this since the beginning of the
founding of the country. A
larger and larger part of our total activity gets moved out of the voluntary
private sector into the coercive government sector. And
it becomes ever more necessary for people to go influence that government
sector.
There
are almost no tools for de-concentration of power.
The initiative is the only effective tool that I know of for the
peaceful de-concentration of power. This
issue is not about politics; it is about freedom. That's
why we need the initiative process.
I
moved my business from California
to
Texas in 1990 (six years
ago). I lived in California
for 31 years. Since 1978 I have
been involved, as a citizen, in the initiative process --- starting
initially collecting signatures for what became Proposition 13. Then
I got more heavily involved as we tried to get other proposals on the
ballot. And I can tell you, it
is VERY difficult to put a statewide proposal on the ballot --- very
difficult. Essentially, you have
to collect about a million signatures in 140 days. And because
many of your signatures won't be valid, you must collect 30% to 50% more
than the legal requirement.
My
friend, Lee Phelps, with whom I worked at times on initiatives in
California,
did a study. He found that 93% of all initiatives attempted --- failed to
collect enough signatures to get on the ballot.
It’s not that they got voted down; 93% never got on the ballot.
Of the 7% with enough support to actually get on the ballot in
California,
over 60% of these initiatives were voted down by the voters.
Citizens are discerning. The mortality rate on initiative proposals is quite high.
There
is a great deal of misinformation about the initiative.
A lot of it circulates about California
and Prop 13. Every so often the Austin
American-Statesman will write a profoundly ignorant editorial about the
subject. They remain profoundly
ignorant about the subject because even after readers write to point out how
factually incorrect their editorial is,
nine months later they will publish the same misinformation in another editorial.
The
initiative is not something that needs to be feared.
Prop
13 is not responsible for the ills of
California.
Prop 13 happened about 17 years
ago --- and
California
boomed after the passage of Prop 13. It
saved a great many people on fixed incomes from losing their homes, as
property taxes rose so high as to require a substantial portion of people's
income.
Another
falsehood that gets spread is that citizens put too many issues on the
ballot. In 1990 in
California
there were 28 propositions on the ballot. This
year 1990 is frequently cited as an example of how not to do things.
I was in
California
in 1990. I have the ballot
pamphlet and this analysis of the 28 propositions.
In 1990 the initiative process in California
was abused --- massively abused. That
appears to be a problem --- but in any real sense --- it's NOT a problem.
In
1990, of those 28 propositions, 19 were put on the ballot by politicians
running for elective office. The
attorney general, John Van de Camp wanted to be Governor and put three of them on.
All three of his propositions were over 20,000 words in length.
The petition page that you signed, unfolded three times so that you
could see all this microscopic print. I'm
one of the few people in the state who read it.
The voter pamphlet in 1990 was 150 pages long --- AND had a
supplement that was 100 pages long. There
was, indeed, abuse of the initiative process in California.
It was by elected representatives --- not citizens.
I can also tell you, this abuse is a non-problem. The
voters know exactly what to do. If
they don't like something, they vote it down.
If they don't understand it, they vote it down.
And they voted down 23 of those 28 items on the ballot that year.
So there is abuse. Like
other good things (cars, medicine, food) the initiative can be abused; but
it is a non-problem.
It
is frequently claimed that if Texans have the initiative process it will
GIVE an advantage to the special interests.
This piece of nonsense ignores the fact that special interests
already have overwhelming advantages. One,
they're organized; two, they have money.
So they already have the advantages that people who are organized and
have money ALWAYS have over those who aren't.
They will still have those advantages when Texans have the initiative
process. But the difference will
be that --- with the initiative --- the people will at least be in the game.
Organized
special interests prefer the status quo.
With no initiative process, the game is totally in the halls of the
capitol in Austin.
Eleven hundred and two laws were passed last year.
I don't know how many people here asked for all those laws.
I don't know whether anyone alive can tell you what those laws are. But
someone wanted each one of those laws that was imposed on us in a 140 day
session.
And
when you hear comments against the initiative process like --- gee, it'll be
used for trivia. I would like to
see an analysis of the 1,102 laws versus all the initiatives that there have
ever been --- an analysis for trivia content.
I can tell you, it is too hard to do a statewide initiative for
anyone to consider using it for trivia.
We have here an analysis done by Americans for Tax Reform, showing
all the things that the initiative process (in the states where they have
it) is being used for. There's
very little trivia here.
Chair:
Can we get a copy of that?
Ford:
I will leave it with you. Let’s
talk about money. Money is
important; but ideas are more important. I
am going to give you some real life examples.
In California
a proposition was put on the ballot which said that automobile insurance
rates are too high, and they should be rolled back to what they were two
years previous, and then discounted 20 percent.
In fighting this initiative, the insurance companies hired the
brightest consultants they could find (at very high fees); and they followed
their advice --- BIG mistake! The
insurance industry spent $62 million dollars trying to defeat this
proposition --- and they lost. They
lost by a half of 1 percent of the vote.
The
insurance industry could have defeated that proposition for $3 million dollars by simply putting three additional propositions on the
ballot: One rolling back media advertising rates (for the electronic and
print media) to what they were two years prior and then discounting them 20
percent; another doing the same for legal fees; and a third for medical
fees. Even the dimwits on
newspaper editorial boards would have looked at that and said, “Gee, these
3 props look somewhat alike. Holy
Moley! One of them affects us --- this is unconstitutional.”
And we would have had, in California that year, an economics lesson
courtesy of the media; and the auto insurance rate rollback would have gone
down to overwhelming defeat --- all for less than $3 million dollars.
But
the insurance companies spent $62 million dollars and they lost. What is
probably unconstitutional went into law in
California
.
So if you ask the questions: Does the initiative process get misused?
Or get used for misguided purposes sometimes?, Do the people sometimes get
fooled? The answer is yes --- occasionally. But
that's no reason to deprive the people of
Texas.
I
want to tell you about a couple of other propositions.
It is sometimes alleged that the people didn't know what they were
voting for when they voted for Prop 13.
I can tell you that every elected official in the state, everybody
who was important in the state was against Prop 13.
When Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Leo McCarthy debated
Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, they
said if Prop 13 passes we will have to close the libraries, we will have to
put the schools on half-time, police and fire protection will be curtailed,
and the roads maintenance will be skipped.
They said all this --- over and over and over again for months.
Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann responded with, “Who do you believe?”
On election day, the voters clearly believed Jarvis and Gann, by a
two to one margin. Property
taxes had long been going up way too fast; and Jarvis and Gann used the initiative to
propose a cap
on it. Prop 13 passed by a two
to one margin --- in spite of the fact that those who opposed it
significantly outspent those in favor.
When
term limits in California
was put on the ballot for statewide offices, there was a five to one
difference in spending. There
was about $1.2 million spent in favor of term limits, while $6
million dollars were spent opposing term limits. Term
limits passed.
Money
is important --- money matters. But ideas are more important.
Good ideas will trump even large sums of money.
Political consultants say they don't believe that. And
they do advise their clients to the contrary.
I
am trying to deliver some information about the initiative use in California
that I know firsthand --- that I've seen close up.
I can get you the facts on any of this --- any back-up you want.
The fact is that California
would be in far worse shape than it is, if it didn't have the initiative
process.
I
would now like to discuss the kind of initiative process that Texans for I &
R would like to see in
Texas
.
We would like to see a process that gives Texans the right to propose
both statutes and constitutional amendments for approval by the voters at
general elections.
You
will hear people argue that we'd be having elections all the time if we
had the initiative process. This
is not true if you set it up so that the initiatives go on the ballot at
general elections. Such
an arrangement would, in fact, increase voter turn-out for the election.
We
want to see a responsible initiative process.
We do not want the process to be subject to any veto by the
legislature.
We
would like to see a process where the signatures required are equal to 4% of
those voting in the last governor's race.
That will amount to several hundred thousand signatures collected
from around Texas.
We believe that these should have to be collected from around the state,
reaching that 4% threshold in half the state senate districts, and we would
like to see 180 day period for the collection of signatures.
This will make a very difficult task for anybody who wants to put a
proposal on the ballot statewide.
The
proposal we have provides that the attorney general review the proposal for
constitutionality. Such review
doesn't guarantee that nothing unconstitutional can get on the ballot, but
such review is a good idea. Some
claim that citizens put more unconstitutional proposals on the ballot than
legislators; it is simply not so. Legislators
pass measures that turn out to be unconstitutional too.
When this happens, courts rule the measures unconstitutional.
We
want the comptroller to append a note as to the fiscal impact --- if any ---
the
proposal may have. We want the
secretary of state to prescribe the form of the petition with full text of
the initiative to be on every petition.
If
you will look at our proposal, it is very similar to what Senator Nelson has
proposed, except I don't think hers provides for voting only at general
elections.
I
think I will stop now. You
understand I am an evangelist for this cause.
With me, it's not about politics, it's about freedom.
There is increasing concentration of power in government.
Each year it gets a little denser and we have almost no tools for
ameliorating that. The
initiative is a powerful, peaceful tool.
Texans need it. Thank
you.
Chair:
Thank you, Mr. Ford. Members,
questions?
Bivins:
Yes.
Chair:
Senator Bivins.
Bivins:
Mike, what business are you in?
Ford:
My company makes electronic locks that go on safes in place of the
dial; they leave an audit trail of when the safe was opened, and what doors
and for how long.
Bivins:
Okay. And you've been
here for six years, in
Texas?
Ford:
No, the company was moved here six years ago, but I didn't move here
until 1992 --- four years ago.
Bivins:
Do you have any particular causes that you would have liked to have
seen on the ballot if we'd had I & R since you got to Texas?
Ford:
Well I personally believe in tax limitations.
I personally believe in term limitation.
And I believe in parents having a choice of where their children go
to school. One of the problems
with the public education system is that the customer's frozen out of all
decision making. Payment for the
system is coercive, and attendance is mandatory.
Bivins:
As a businessman you, you've got to be sensitive to the cost to
business. You gave a pretty
dramatic example of what happened on the insurance proposal in California
where $62 million dollars was spent by an industry to defend itself against
what could most charitably be described as arbitrary, arbitrary provisions.
I had a guy from the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce tell me, “I am
going to work hard with the business groups in Texas,
Texas
Association of Business and chambers of commerce to oppose initiative and
referendum. I know you're for
it, Senator, but I want to tell you, I am concerned about the cost to
business to defend against the types of oftentimes popular ideas that are
easy to get the signatures for, that wind up being complicated issues and
cost business more than they benefit business in California
.
Could you comment on that?
Ford:
Yes, I believe that the insurance industry could have easily defeated
that proposal. My insurance
company is United Services Automobile Association in San
Antonio. It
was then also. They sent me a
petition to circulate, because they put a competing proposal on the ballot
trying to fight this. I got
their petition. Insurance is a
valuable service. I was for it.
I signed it. I was
collecting signatures from everyone who visited my house.
Then I read their proposal. They
were trying to stick restraint of trade provisions into law (brokers
couldn't discount, banks couldn't compete). Their
proposal wasn't clean. They got
what they deserved. And I am
sorry about that because I think what the voters passed unconstitutional.
I thought the courts should have thrown it out as unconstitutional.
But I do NOT believe that businessmen operating properly have a lot
to fear from the initiative process.
Bivins:
When did the automobile insurance roll-back proposition pass?
Ford:
(pause) It must have been 1988 maybe.
It was contested in court for a long while --- the better part of a
decade.
Bivins:
If you're in the insurance business there's no law that says you have
to write insurance. Did any
insurance companies leave California
because of that provision?
Ford:
A number of companies threatened to stop writing this insurance in
California.
I think some companies probably did; but I am not a student of the
insurance business.
California
formed a new statewide office of Insurance Commissioner. John
Garimendi got elected to it. There
was a lot of political grandstanding. He
was going to shake the insurance companies up. I
don't believe that businessmen operating properly have anything to fear from
the initiative process and --- particularly if the courts do their job.
I think the California
courts failed to do their job. To
me that proposition was an absolutely unconstitutional proposal.
Unconstitutional
proposals have passed before, but the courts have thrown them out.
Back when pay TV first started and they were running cable to houses
for subscription TV, I wanted to get a cable in my house because I wanted
better TV reception. The movie owners put
a proposal on the ballot that essentially made that against the law. The
voters passed it. The courts
threw it out after a number of years. It
wrecked the subscription TV business at that time.
So there's a counter example of somebody who got hurt by that.
But again if the courts would behave more responsibly, no one would
have been hurt.
Bivins:
What city did you live in California?
Ford:
I lived in Mill
Valley, California
.
Bivins:
That's in northern California?
Ford:
It's in northern California
--- across the Golden Gate
Bridge in Marin
County
.
Bivins:
I represent a pretty intensely rural district in the Senate; and a
concern that my constituents have about I & R is the potential that we
get, for example, a million signatures or whatever it takes on a proposal to
do away with the small and sparse adjustment in the school funding formula.
I know in your proposal that you require the requisite number of
signatures from at least half of the congressional districts in the state.
I am concerned that that may not be enough --- that in order to
ensure that we don't have a tyranny of the majority, that number needs to be
higher, the number of congressional districts that is.
I guess that started out as a question and wound up being a comment. That
is a concern I have about the mechanism for adopting I & R in Texas.
Ford:
Well, I don't have a problem with that.
I would rather see a signature distribution requirement more than the signature
threshold being raised.
Bivins:
Right.
Ford:
I was asked to respond to a letter that Representative Turner wrote
to Lieutenant Governor Bullock where he expressed concern; and he cited an
example in Arizona
of where citizens in the urban areas of Tucson
and
Phoenix
had put on a ballot a prohibition of predatory trapping of wild animals with
steel traps. I called the
Lincoln Caucus to ask what happened. They
told me that it was on the ballot; but it got defeated.
They also told me that Arizona
is the most urbanized state (being mostly desert except for the two large
cities where most of the people live). That
it had been put on the ballot but it had been voted down.
I presume it was voted down by the same urban population, a subset of
which, decided to put it on the ballot.
I
am a believer that if you get the ideas up on the ballot, they get extended
debate. That's a major advantage
initiatives have over legislation. Hardly
anybody knows what's going on in the state capital, even if you read the
newspaper. But if it's an
initiative: it's in writing, it stays stable, all the newspapers and the
pundits think they have to tell you how to vote on it, and they do.
There's debate back and forth for a long time. This
includes the time while it circulates to get the hundreds of
thousands of signatures to get on the ballot. Our proposal also provides for
signature gathering to be finished 150 days before you go on the ballot.
So you've got the better part of a year where the proposal is in
broad daylight --- and stable. That's
a lot better visibility than you get on any of those 1,102 bills that was
passed last year.
Chair:
You should have seen the 4,000 that failed.
Ford:
One representative said to me, “what do you mean citizens don't
know what's going on, we have open
hearings.” It
is true that hearings are open,
but most people don’t live in Austin.
Anyone who's gone to a hearing knows, that they
might not take place as scheduled, and if you wait around a couple of hours
you still don't know when or whether you're going to get your say.
Open hearings are not the same thing as a year of public debate.
Bivins:
Mr. Ford, you're a very compelling advocate for your cause.
Thank you for coming.
Ford:
Thank you.
Chair:
Mr. Ford, I have a question too. I
appreciate your testimony. This
follows up a little bit to Senator Bivins' questions.
As a business person, you interact with other business people in your
capacity as one of the initiative and referendum leaders in this state. Do
you find, on a personal level, that most business people with whom you
interact are supportive of this? Senator
Bivins made a comment about a business person from his area that expressed
concerns. We had very strong
support from NFIB, National Federation of Independent Business people during
the last session. Yet I am
starting to hear that there may be some of the lobby in Austin
representing business, that is more in opposition to this movement than
business people, but what are you hearing out there among real business
people on this issue?
Ford:
I think most business people are like most citizens. The
majority of them are unaware of the issue.
Chair:
uh huh.
Ford:
That's the first thing I would say.
Secondly I think if you're a small business and you're aware, you're
probably in favor of it. If
you're a large business and you're aware, you probably have a lobbyist that
you retain, at considerable expense, and so you listen to him.
And the lobbyist says, this is a bad idea. After all, the
lobbyists have got the game all to themselves now. It
is not in their interest to have citizens participating in the game.
So I think there's a clear distinction between whether you're big
business, or just mainstream business. But
my basic answer is that most businessmen are working to make a living and
support their family and to keep their company alive; and they're not
thinking about initiative and referendum.
Chair:
Thank you.
