The initiative process provided by the Nevada Constitution gives the state’s citizens the right to force a public vote on an issue if they gather a minimum number of signatures. It is democracy in its purest form. Over the last few years, many measures have been proposed through this process, from legalizing the sale of marijuana, to raising the minimum wage, to regulating smoking in public places. TASC (Tax and Spending Control for Nevada) and PISTOL (Property Owner’s Bill of Rights), which were proposed in 2006, were developed by people concerned with controlling government spending and protecting property rights.
The recently concluded legislative session saw several efforts to change the initiative process. Some passed, some failed, and many were modified almost beyond recognition. For a complete list of the proposed measures and their outcomes, go to the Web site maintained by the Nevada Families Eagle Forum: nevadafamilies.org. It is interesting to look for the motives behind some of these bills, and to wonder why legislators are so determined to erect barriers to keep people as far away as possible from the governmental process.
For example, mining interests are fearful of Nevada voters because Montana voters passed an initiative forcing mine owners to clean up polluted sites. It’s no coincidence that two of the bills that would have made it extremely difficult to conduct an initiative campaign were sponsored by Sen. Dean Rhoads, whose rural district depends heavily on mining. Union organizers harassed signature gatherers for the TASC petition in 2006, and it seems likely they put political pressure on politicians to oppose future efforts to control taxes and spending.
The powerful education lobby opposes any efforts to reduce the growth of the property taxes that fund a significant portion of their budget. They knew before the session started that former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle intended to put another property tax restraint petition together this year, and they wanted to undermine her efforts before she could get started. All these forces, and many more, were behind efforts to throw as many obstacles as possible in front of people trying to exercise their right to get on the ballot.
Assembly Bill 606 would have required each person or group advocating passage or defeat of a constitutional amendment to submit to the Secretary of State the names, addresses and phone numbers of all officers, employees and volunteers. The bill also prohibited petition organizers from paying people for each signature they collect, which has proven to be the most efficient way to run a petition campaign, and contained several other burdensome requirements. The bill passed the Assembly 42 to 0, but was stopped in the Senate.
The original version of Senate Bill (SB) 549 would have required a petition to contain signatures from registered voters in each of the state’s 42 Assembly Districts. It also would have required petition gatherers to carry around registration lists and verify that each person who wanted to sign the petition was a registered voter. The 42-district provision was eventually eliminated, and replaced by a formula that requires an initiative petition be signed by registered voters equaling at least 10 percent of the total number of voters in each county.
Senate Bill 78, which passed, makes it a felony to sign someone else’s name to a petition, or to willfully alter personal information on a petition with the intent to falsify. It makes each individual alteration a separate felony offense. At first glance, it sounds harmless – the initiative process wouldn’t have much credibility if petitions were full of forgeries. However, if an opponent decides to challenge a petition, the fear of being accused of a felony (or multiple felonies) could be a powerful tool for harassing signature gatherers.
Assembly Bill 604 includes many more financial reporting requirements, increasing the burden of paperwork for campaigners and making them spend time and money filling out forms instead of doing their political activities.
Despite the best efforts of big labor, Big Education, Big Mining, and just plain big government, the people of Nevada made it through the session with their rights intact. We can still sign a petition and get a proposal in front of the voters. Now it’s up to each of us to investigate the measures that will be proposed this year and to do our best to make sure that the ones we support make it past all the obstacles and become law.