Becky Miller, treasurer of Oregon Taxpayers United, the sponsor of Ballot Measure 96, said her organization aims to bring parity to the way the initiative process is amended, but opponents of Measure 96 worry that it would unnecessarily bind the Oregon Legislature.
“It’s our process, not [the legislators’]. It shouldn’t be so easy for them to propose change,” Miller said.
If Measure 96 passes, the Legislature would be barred from making it harder for initiatives to reach the ballot. Such constraints could include increasing the number of signatures required to place an initiative on the ballot or imposing geographical restrictions on signatures. In addition, the Legislature could refer no constitutional amendment to the voters that limits change of the Oregon Constitution by initiative.
Supporters say the measure would even the playing field, but opponents warn it would make legal fine tuning of the initiative process extremely difficult.
As the law now stands, the Legislature may conduct hearings and draft bills on the initiative process and refer them to the electorate for a vote. But this option would be eliminated if Ballot Measure 96 passes.
Former Oregon governor and former secretary of state Barbara Roberts said Ballot Measure 96 would overly restrict change of the initiative petition process.
“I believe it ought to be like any other legal process, subject to some occasional examination,” she said. The proposed changes would make routine fine-tuning too costly and time-consuming, she said.
Politicians do take part in the initiative process, as Gov. John Kitzhaber did to get Measure 1 on the Nov. 7 ballot. Total costs to do so amounted to approximately $250,000, said Becca Uherbelau, who is managing the Measure 1 campaign on behalf of the governor. A majority of those costs — $180,000 — went toward paying for signature gathering at a rate of $1.55 per signature, she said.
Legislators are able to put proposals for change in the initiative process before voters “with the stroke of a pen,” Miller said, yet her organization must put out “a year’s worth of work and a couple hundred thousand dollars and gather 130,000 signatures” to do the same.
If Measure 96 passes and legislators later wish to make it harder to get an initiative on the ballot, they would need to start an initiative petition themselves and gather the necessary signatures.
“Legislators are constantly attacking the [initiative] process because it threatens their power, and we need a strong constitutional protection for that,” Miller said.
The initiative process perks up government, she said.
“We have a much more exciting and involved system of government in Oregon than in many parts of the country because of the initiative process,” she said.