Dan Walters: Is initiative process the cause or result of state's malaise?

The old philosophical argument over whether the chicken or the egg first emerged from the primordial ooze has a political counterpart in California's circular debate over the initiative process.

Is directly presenting proposed laws and constitutional amendments to voters a safety valve by which they can do what the Legislature is unwilling or unable to do, the cause of the Capitol's endemic inability to function effectively, or, perhaps, both a symptom of our political malaise and a cure that worsens the disease?

It's been nearly a century since reformist Gov. Hiram Johnson and the Legislature adopted the initiative and other reforms to break the political stranglehold of the Southern Pacific Railroad – dubbed "The Octopus" in a muckraking novel of the era. But the initiative's use as a major policy tool is of much more recent vintage, dating from the enactment of Proposition 13, the landmark property tax limit measure, 30 years ago next month.

Proposition 13's progenitors, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, showed the way. Those on the left, right and in the middle have been using the initiative ever since to move policy, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to qualify and promote their measures, often matched at least dollar for dollar by those on the other side, with varying degrees of success.

The state's ever-increasing budget deficit is a direct testament to the initiative's primacy. Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes, and Proposition 98, passed a decade later to guarantee schools a share of state revenues, are two of the most important factors in the chronic income-outgo gap, both in financial terms and in the constriction of the governor's and the Legislature's ability to close it.

The initiative process certainly remains popular among voters, who believe – whether accurately or delusively – that it empowers them. But with politicians, narrow interests and their big money increasingly dominating ballot measures, voters' decisions have become a confusing welter. In back-to-back elections, for instance, voters overwhelmingly rejected measures that would make it easier to raise taxes and to cut spending, leaving everyone mystified about voters' true desires vis-à-vis the deficit.

Reforming the initiative process, or at least changing it, has kicked around political and academic circles for decades, to no avail. Those who profit handsomely from the initiative industry certainly oppose fundamental change, and voters are suspicious about being disenfranchised.

A political reform outfit called the Center for Governmental Studies has stepped into the debate with a detailed proposal to alter, and it says improve, the initiative, arguing that poorly drafted, confusing measures supported and opposed by big wads of special interest cash are poorly serving the state's needs.

The Southern California-based organization, branding the initiative the "fourth branch of government," proposes, among other things, to empower initiative sponsors to negotiate with the Legislature on compromises, impose first-ever limits on campaign contributions to ballot measure campaigns, provide video explanations of measures to voters, and make it easier for grass-roots organizations to use the process by extending the time period for circulating petitions.

The group contends that these and other reforms would preserve the initiative as a popular safety valve while making it more flexible and available to non-moneyed interests. Perhaps they would, although one should be suspicious of the proposed contribution limits since those have proved ineffective in other venues.

More than anything, however, we should understand that the initiative process, however it may function, is not a substitute for officeholders doing the jobs they were elected to do. But that would take some even more fundamental reforms.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.