PHOENIX — State lawmakers want to force voters to re-approve, over and over again, perhaps dozens of measures they previously enacted.
On a party-line vote Tuesday, the Senate Elections Committee approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would mandate a revote every eight years of any measure that spends or collects public dollars.
SCR 1003, which now needs Senate action, would have to be ratified by voters in November to take effect.
Sen. Chester Crandell, R-Heber, said not every measure that voters have approved has proved successful. And he said some proposals have outlived their usefulness.
But Crandell said a 1998 constitutional amendment precludes lawmakers from altering or repealing any measure approved at the polls. He said putting them back on the ballot is the only way of revisiting them.
Sandy Bahr, lobbyist for the Sierra Club, complained that SCR 1003 is unnecessary. She said it takes a simple majority vote of the Legislature to ask voters to reconsider what they have previously approved.
By contrast, Bahr said this plan would mean forcing perennial votes on issues that should be well settled. She cited the 1998 election where voters approved a ban on cockfighting.
“Should we really have to vote on that every eight years?” she asked.
Crandell said his measure would not apply to that measure because it does not collect or spend public money. Ditto a ban on payday loans and requirements for larger pens for breeding pigs and veal.
But he said anything with money should be reviewed.
That includes items ranging from a voter-approved tax on cigarettes to fund health care for the working poor to a requirement to boost state aid to schools every year to match inflation.
Even the decision by voters to take from lawmakers the power to draw legislative and congressional lines would be affected, because the Independent Redistricting Commission gets public funds.
In fact, Crandell said his measure is written so that voters would get a chance every eight years to actually rescind the $9,000 pay hikes they gave legislators in 1998. But he said this provides “fiscal responsibility to the state.”
