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Ballot Initiatives: Are They a Good Way to Govern?
Florida voters love their citizens' ballot initiatives. They have voted on 14 since 2000 and passed every one of them.
Florida voters supported voluntary pre-kindergarten, smaller class sizes, limits on workplace smoking and protections for pregnant pigs. They also supported the creation of a high-speed rail system – and then voted for an amendment to repeal it four years later.
California leads the nation with 62 citizen-led initiatives on the ballot during the 2000s, and Florida and Massachusetts are tied for ninth with 14 each. But Florida bucks the national trend when it comes to approving initiatives.
In 11 of the 15 states with the most citizen-led initiatives on the ballot, voters have rejected at least half of them. Florida voters have said "yes” to everything since 1996, when they shot down a proposal to levy a fee on raw sugar to help restore the Everglades.
Clearly, the initiative process has become an effective way for citizens and organizations to have a direct say how their government operates. But does the process lead to good government, particularly when citizens believe the Legislature isn't paying attention to what they want? Or, do initiatives produce a hodgepodge of new policies that can be convoluted, contradictory and even devastating to the state's economy?
Where Does ‘Hometown Democracy' Fit?
Depending on whom you ask, the "Hometown Democracy” amendment proposal is either an ideal example of why the initiative process is needed to achieve good public policy or "exhibit A” for why the process can have disastrous consequences.
Lesley Blackner, a land-use attorney who is president of the amendment's primary sponsor, contends that citizens cannot rely on politicians to achieve the "orderly, affordable growth” that they desire. Politicians, she says in a column published in The Tampa Tribune, receive "generous campaign donations” from developers and often work in the development industry themselves.
But Mark Wilson, president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, argues that no legislation or policy proposal "has the potential to do more economic harm than Amendment 4.” The amendment would "not only make it extraordinarily difficult for local businesses to grow, it would also deter new businesses from bringing jobs to Florida,” he wrote in a column for The Tampa Tribune.
The two sides will square off for the next several months in an expensive, high-stakes battle. It could be no other way. High-profile initiative campaigns are extremely expensive, making it difficult for true "grass roots” efforts to succeed, said Susan MacManus, a political scientist and distinguished university professor at the University of South Florida.
Many of Florida's recent "citizen” initiatives were started by committees affiliated with groups such as the Florida Medical Association and Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers.
In 2006, supporters and opponents of just 12 of the most expensive initiatives in the country spent more than $329 million – including $159 million for a single renewable energy-related campaign in California, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center,
"You have to campaign on these amendments as much as you have to do for a candidate, so it's very expensive,” MacManus said. "You have to rely on TV advertising for the most part.”
TV advertising means sound bytes, catchy phrases and little depth – another potential problem with initiatives, particularly complicated ones like Hometown Democracy.
The name "Hometown Democracy” evokes the same kind of "good feeling” that University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett says has helped many other amendments win approval.
"The issues that have gotten on the ballot sound good to the average Floridian,” Jewett said. "With the class size amendment, I'm a parent … and who wouldn't want smaller classes? Voluntary pre-kindergarten sounds great. Pregnant Pigs arguably doesn't belong in the constitution, but on some basic level, I don't want to treat animals badly.”
For more complicated issues, however, the average voter often doesn't know the details of a policy and the impact that it could have. That is one of the Hometown Democracy opponents' arguments. They contend that uninformed voters would be making the critical land-use decisions shaping their communities' future. Supporters contend that giving voters that power is far superior to the "rotten status quo,” as Blackner calls it.
Not every issue has potentially major economic consequences that voters need to analyze. Jewett cites term limits as a good example of a law often enacted through the initiative process. While most citizens tend to support term limits, legislators typically do not want to limit their time in office, forcing citizens to go the initiative route.
The Economic Impact of Amendments
Florida requires fiscal impact statements – completed by the state's Financial Impact Estimating Conference – to appear on the ballot along with the summaries of each question. The financial impact summaries examine estimated additional costs or revenues to state and local governments.
If there are added costs, the fiscal impact summaries do not say how the proposal would be funded.
The summaries also do not examine how a proposal could impact state or local economies.
Many of Florida's amendments, such as those focused on class size, voluntary pre-kindergarten and minimum wage, carry costs for governments and businesses. And they can have secondary economic impacts.
Improvements to the state's education system, for example, could make the state more attractive to companies that may want to move here. On the other hand, amendments that burden the state budget or add costs for businesses could harm efforts to recruit more companies to Florida.
In California, some political observers blame the many citizens initiatives passed by voters in the past four decades for causing severe budget problems. The budget woes are so severe that the state recently issued IOUs instead of checks for state tax refunds and other expenses, according to NPR.
In the 1970s, voters frustrated that property taxes were skyrocketing reduced their property taxes and limited future increases, NPR reported.
"Voters tend to be interested in immediate gratification," says Dan Schnur, head of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "And if they are asked to vote for something that is appealing to them, there's no part of the package that says, ‘You might like this now, but will you like it in 10 or 20 years?' ”
Although Florida's budget troubles pale in comparison to California's, University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith says several recent ballot initiatives, including some initiated by the Legislature, have produced unpleasant economic consequences.
The recent amendment to increase homestead exemptions and make savings accrued through the prior "Save-Our-Homes” amendment portable for residents who move was touted by supporters as a way to jump start the state's sluggish housing market.
That hasn't happened, Snaith said, but the amendment has worsened budget crises for state and local governments and school districts, and some of them have responded by raising their tax rates.
Snaith, the director of UCF's Institute for Economic Competitiveness, is not a fan of how the state relies so much on population growth to finance government – he has called that a "Ponzi scheme.” Still, Snaith says "handcuffing” governments with Hometown Democracy or revenue caps – an idea under consideration for a future ballot – only makes an already bad situation worse.
"The economic seas are stormy, the winds are shifting and the state's in transition,” he said. "We need to have the flexibility to adjust those plans and not make them so rigid that we're stuck going in one direction no matter what.”
The Future of Citizens' Initiatives
Florida's streak of all citizen initiatives earning voters' approval isn't likely to last through another decade.
A change approved by voters in 2006 makes it more difficult to get amendments passed. That change, a constitutional amendment initiated by the Legislature, requires approval by 60 percent of voters, up from 50 percent.
Under that new standard, five of the 14 amendments approved between 2000 and 2008 – including the often-derided pregnant pigs amendment -- would have failed.
Top Web resources
This state Division of Elections Web site explains the process initiatives must go through to get on the ballot. This National Conference of State Legislatures database includes initiatives from all 50 states, dating back to 1902.
Voting on citizen-led initiatives
Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia allow citizen-led ballot initiatives. Voters in most of those states can initiate changes to either the state constitution or state statutes. Florida and Mississippi allow initiatives only to amend the state Constitution. Six states and D.C. only allow voters to amend state statutes.
Below are the states with the most citizen-led ballot initiatives since 2000 and the approval rates for those initiatives*.
|
State |
# on ballot
|
# approved
|
% approved
|
|
California |
62 |
20 |
32
|
|
Oregon
|
49
|
13
|
27
|
|
Colorado
|
35
|
11
|
31
|
|
Washington
|
28
|
18
|
64
|
|
Arizona |
27
|
12
|
44
|
|
Nevada |
17
|
11
|
65
|
|
S. Dakota
|
17
|
4
|
24
|
|
Alaska
|
16
|
6
|
38
|
|
Florida
|
14
|
14
|
100
|
|
MMassachusettss |
14 |
5
|
36
|
|
Maine |
12 |
3
|
25
|
|
Missouri
|
12
|
6
|
50
|
|
Ohio
|
11
|
3
|
27
|
|
Montana |
10
|
8
|
80
|
|
Michigan
|
10
|
5
|
50
|
* The chart's totals do not include initiatives slated to be on future ballots. They also do not include citizen referenda, a process that allows people to collect signatures to put specific legislation approved by the Legislature up for an acceptance or rejection by voters. Florida does not allow citizen referenda.
Sources: National Conference of State Legislatures and Ballot Initiative Strategy Center
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