Homeless in Arizona

I'm sure they also have a lot of other reasons they don't want us serfs to pass laws.

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Kwok: The other initiatives that got under Arizona lawmakers' skin

Abe Kwok , The Republic | azcentral.com 5:07 p.m. MT April 12, 2017

Last year’s minimum-wage measure, Proposition 206, has served as Exhibit A in Republican lawmakers’ overzealous prosecution of the citizen-initiative process.

Too easy for petition circulators to confuse or mislead the public. Too many invalid signatures end up on the petitions. Too unimpeded a path for out-of-state special interests such as unions to drive a measure.

Many fingers have been pointed at the Arizona Chamber of Commerce for the aggressive push to restrict initiatives and referenda. Sour grapes from a stinging defeat, the left asserts.

That may be so. But the animus over Arizonans’ right to make law through the ballot box is not new.

Here’s a look at some of the citizen-led ballot issues that have gotten under the skin of the Republican-controlled Legislature over the years.

Marijuana (all 5 attempts)

Reefer madness got us here as much as anything.

Five times now marijuana has been on the ballot — the first four involving medical pot.

As early as 1996, Arizonans voted to legalize medical marijuana, but it took until Prop. 203 in 2010 to authorize people with specific illnesses to use the drug by buying from state-licensed dispensaries.

The current attempts to choke off initiatives represent many things — one is a pre-emptive strike against the big push toward marijuana legalization, such as last year’s “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol” Prop. 205, which failed by a few percentage points.

Voter Protection Act, 1996

When Arizonans approved medical marijuana the first time, in 1996, the Legislature responded by passing bills to undo the measure. That prompted a big backlash.

The public got itself a voter “lock box” in the form of Prop. 105, also known as the Voter Protection Act. Prop. 105 made it next to impossible for lawmakers to alter a voter-approved measure — requiring approval of three-fourths of both chambers of the Legislature and only if the change furthers the intent of the measure.

In lawmakers’ pursuits to punish the citizen-initiatives process, the Voter Protection Act amounts to the original sin: The public stripped away what is rightfully a legislative power.

Independent Redistricting, 2000

Few initiatives took away as consequential and powerful an authority from the Legislature as Prop. 106 in 2000. The creation of an Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission amended the state Constitution and gave the right to draw new election maps to an appointed panel.

While it didn’t exactly take politics out of the process — each political party essentially got two representatives, and they get to select the fifth member of the board — the system removed the map-drawing decision one level away from state lawmakers.

It was not surprising that support and opposition to Prop. 106 broke mostly along party lines in a GOP-controlled state.

Unlike another progressive-driven movement — Clean Elections and its premise of taxpayer-funded political campaigns — the Independent Redistricting Commission survived court challenges, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court (upheld in a 5-4 ruling in 2015). Health care for the poor, 2000

Arizonans annoyed conservatives and the business community with Prop. 200, the Arizona Tobacco Tax and Healthcare Act, in 1994, which raised taxes on tobacco steeply and directed the proceeds to specific programs, including health care for the needy and low-income children.

But it was Prop. 204 in 2000 that would enrage legislators. The measure designated money from a settlement with the tobacco industry to provide health care to all Arizonans living at the federal poverty level. As naysayers predicted, enrollment and spending skyrocketed.

When the economy tanked, state lawmakers were left holding the bag and forced to make cuts elsewhere to essentially bail out a voters’ mandate.

(A 2004 proposition that was referred by the Legislature and approved by voters required all initiatives to have a funding source that accounts for future costs — not tapping the general fund for any coverage.) Minimum wage, 2006 and now

Prop. 206 angered and frustrated the business community — and not just because it was an unwelcome mandate and added guaranteed sick leave. There was also unease about businesses’ inability to stop a populist movement the next go-around.

The measure — it raised the minimum hourly wage to $10 and to $12 by 2020 — passed with more than 58 percent of the vote.

In 2006, Arizonans approved the state’s first minimum wage, at $6.75 an hour, and included a cost-of-living increase each year. That measure won 65 percent of the vote.

Businesses, and many lawmakers, fear unions and leftist organizations will be back after a few years with yet another measure that voters blindly support. A long tug-of-war

Regardless of what happens this session — one bill outlawing the practice of paying petition circulators by the signature, already passed and two other bills tightening standards and making it easier to challenge or otherwise invalidate initiatives — the efforts to re-center the balance of legislative powers will continue.

And fair or not, they will come at the expense of voters.