We have taken advantage of the poor, oppressed members of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce long enough!
They didn’t bother mounting a real campaign against the minimum wage initiative, Proposition 206, and we voters had the audacity to go and pass it. What an outrage!
We have behaved badly, disobeying our betters among the rich and elite of Paradise Valley and Scottsdale, making them feel they might not have total control of the state. So now they must rise up from their undignified trampling and take away our misused initiative rights.
That’s the upshot of five measures introduced in the House of Representatives, four of which passed out of committee Thursday with a decisive vote in favor from a Tucson legislator. Todd Clodfelter, a new Republican representive in Legislative District 10, approved the measures despite efforts to sway him against and to kill the bills in committee.
Many legislators have long chafed under the restrictions of the 1998 Voter Protection Act, which makes it hard for the Legislature to change the laws voters have passed through initiative. Of course, that 1998 law was passed precisely because the Legislature had messed too many times with the voters’ intent.
Now they are back with a new justification — the minimum wage — and a powerful, monied lobby ready to enforce it. Never mind that the initiative process was a key part of the founding of the state of Arizona back in 1912.
Three bills that passed out of committee Thursday were sponsored by Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita (R-Scottsdale) and would:
- Repeal the Voter Protection Act, meaning legislators could alter laws passed by voters even if the changes don’t further the intent of the law and without a supermajority. (HCR 2002)
- Allow the Legislature to repeal any referendum — a similar voter-sponsored ballot issue through which voters, with enough signatures, can force a vote on legislation passed by the Legislature. (HCR 2007)
- Require a notice on the ballot, fundraising material and advertising related to initiatives that they can only be changed in the future by a three-quarters vote in the Legislature and if the change furthers the purpose of the original ballot measure (HB 2320).
Another measure, sponsored by Rep. Vince Leach (R-SaddleBrooke), would throw up potentially insurmountable barriers to signature-gathering by requiring companies circulating petitions to post a bond of up to $50,000, requiring background checks on signature gatherers and making them take classes and certify they understand state law on initiatives. (HB 2404)
This is the bill that the Arizona Chamber is most closely backing, though it also expressed support for the others.
Another bill that passed out of committee Thursday and was sponsored by Rep. Bob Thorpe would prohibit out-of-state donors from giving to committees supporting or opposing initiatives. This bill comes with a giant loophole, of course: An out-of-state person or group could give to an Arizona group that is on the same side of an initiative, which might then consider donating more to the initiative campaign. (HB 2255)
Thorpe, who’s made a name for himself by introducing loopy, doomed legislation this session, made a characteristic amendment to his bill Thursday. It basically calls Arizona’s initiative and referendum process a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
These are some of the amendment’s specific words: “Article IV, section 4 of the United States Constitution states that ‘[t]he United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.’ Voter referendums, especially those financed by external forces, are an exercise in direct democracy, and thus violate the guarantee of a republican form of government.”
A bill introduced in the upper chamber by Sen. John Kavanagh would make qualifying for the ballot much more onerous. Rather than gathering the signatures of 10 or 15 percent of the state’s total electorate, depending on the type of ballot issue, petition circulators would have to gather the relevant percentage of signatures from each legislative district.
This would make signature-gathering tremendously more complicated if not impossible.
What this is all about is taking power away from the citizens and giving it back to the Legislature and the interests that control them, such as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. President and CEO Glenn Hamer said in a letter Thursday that “The Chamber worked hard to campaign to defeat marijuana legalization and the minimum wage measures.”
But that’s not true. It spent $1,493,000 to defeat Prop. 205, the marijuana inititiative. It donated just $25,037 to the anti-minimum-wage campaign.
In his letter, Hamer asserts “The Voter Protection Act only protects bad ideas.”
But that’s untrue — it really protects us from the chamber and the legislators it controls.
Town-hall tempest
Rep. Martha McSally was right when she said during her “Tele Town Hall” Tuesday that opponents are trying to get her into a room so they can yell at her. But her words went farther than that and demeaned sincere opposition that is integral to our system of government.
“There are activist political Democrats around the country that are trying to create political theater that are demanding town halls so that they can create an ambush,” she said. “This is about trapping people in a political ambush for political theater. Don’t be fooled by the trap of the activists that are trying to hurt Republicans right now.”
I visited a demonstration of about 125 people outside her office Tuesday morning and talked to many attendees. They are Democrats, for the most part, and they are angry, in large measure at President Trump and his actions. But their demand is sincere: What they want is to face McSally and tell her how they feel.
Then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords faced similar demands in 2010 from tea-party members, and she held three real town-hall meetings — live ones that anyone could attend — anyway.
“Gabby faced it,” said Ron Barber, who was Giffords’ district director and successor till McSally beat him in 2014. “It was ugly — and I thought dangerous at one point. The point I’m making is that she was not afraid, even in the face of a screaming mob, to let her constituents talk to her.”
