The voter initiative process is vital to democracy in our state, especially when Florida citizens are faced with an indifferent Legislature.
Published February 15, 2004
In a burst of hyperbole, the Florida Chamber of Commerce said not long ago that voter initiatives are "the number one threat to Florida's future." Not so. Nothing could be worse for Florida than to disarm the people as the chamber and some of its allies want the Legislature to do.
The voter initiative was written into the 1968 Constitution by people with fresh memories of a 20-year struggle for fair apportionment that could not have been won without the historic "one voter, one vote" rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. It would take only a few years for the new legislators to become as jaded with power as their Pork Chop predecessors had been, but that was time enough to create a new constitution that reserved ultimate power to the people through the right of petition and initiative.
A state senator named Reubin Askew voted for that constitution. Eight years later, as governor, he led the first successful initiative campaign, for a code of ethics the Legislature had refused to pass. It requires, among other things, "full and public" financial disclosure by elected officials. It prohibits legislators from representing paying clients before state agencies and from becoming paid lobbyists until they have been out of office for two years. But for the initiative, all that would still be a pipe dream.
So when Askew warns, as he did this month, "We need to be careful not to undermine the people's right to go directly to the ballot," it behooves everyone to listen.
It is true, of course, that the initiative can be misused, as this page was saying long before the business community awakened. Well-financed gambling lobbies, having failed three times, are trying yet again to legalize casino gambling, a vice that deserves no sanction in any constitution. The fishing-net ban didn't belong in Florida's. Neither did high-speed rail, the workplace smoking ban or class size, and certainly not the pregnant pig amendment. Such issues, whatever their merits, are not the sort of basic principles of which constitutions should be made.
But it bears remembering that in most of these cases it was the Legislature's persistent, arrogant indifference that forced the sponsors to resort to the initiative process. Had Gov. Bush promised the voters any responsible alternative to the class size amendment, they probably would have disapproved it.
It is sad to contemplate, but there is perhaps as little democracy in Tallahassee today as when the Pork Choppers ruled. Legislative districts are equal in population, but that is a superficial difference so long as the districts are drawn in ways that suppress meaningful competition. This is the worst of times to eviscerate the initiative.
The chamber coalition's bottom-line demand, for a two-thirds supermajority to pass any constitutional amendment at the polls, is the absolute worst of all possible changes. That would stop most initiative sponsors from even trying. A case could be made for raising the threshold slightly, perhaps to 55 percent, but no higher. Legislators ought to reject out of hand the notion of trying to handicap any of the initiatives now circulating through the device of a special referendum that would go on the Aug. 31 primary ballot. That has foul play written all over it.
Meanwhile, the dignity of the Constitution could - and should - be protected by allowing citizens to propose statutes by initiative and by reserving constitutional initiatives for proposals that would alter, amend or repeal existing provisions, affect fundamental rights or change the structure of government. These need to go together, of course.
Legislators could wisely consider the concept of an indirect initiative, in which the Legislature would have an opportunity to suggest an alternative to what a petition proposes. Though the sponsors could still insist on going to the ballot, a good-faith response by the Legislature might satisfy them.
And surely there is room for marginal reforms, such as an earlier deadline for submitting signatures and better disclosure of the real sponsors and financiers behind initiative campaigns.
But these steps are as far as the Legislature should go.
