Sanctity of initiative process must upheld

Billings Gazette editorial 9/24/06

What does it take to unite Montana groups as diverse as Montana AFL-CIO and Montana Chamber of Commerce? Montana AARP and Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies? Montana Contractors Association and Montana Trial Lawyers? Montana School Boards Association and the Montana State Firemen's Association?

It takes a scheme so onerous that its effect on Montana would be bad for everyone. That dubious distinction belongs to Constitutional Initiative 97. About 50 Montana organizations, including those mentioned above, have joined Not in Montana, a political committee working to defeat an attempt to apply an unworkable formula to constrain spending in a state that already is required to maintain a balanced budget.

Apart from being a threat to business, education and public services, the complex, 1,400-word proposed initiative has been ruled unconstitutional. In a separate District Court ruling, the tactics used to gather petition signatures have been found to be riddled with fraud and deception.

CI-97 invites lawsuits. For starters, it says judges can exempt "any spending category, or revenue source" from the spending limit. It was this provision that Helena District Judge Thomas Honzel found unconstitutional saying that would make an additional change in the Montana Constitution.

The constitution says that one initiative can make only one amendment. The text of CI-97 also says that any Montana resident as well as any person "doing business in Montana" can sue to enforce CI-97 and, if successful, "shall be awarded legal costs and reasonable attorney fees."

When Montanan citizens gave themselves the power to legislate by initiative, they didn't envision that itinerant, professional signature gathers would be paid per signature and leave the state with paychecks of $60,000 or more.

The initiative process wasn't intended as a vehicle for secretive, wealthy political activists from outside Montana to buy their way onto the state's general election ballot. Montanans certainly didn't expect that signature gatherers would lie to voters about their residency, lie about the purpose of petitions or lie about who had hired them. But all of those things happened during the campaign to get proposed Constitutional Initiatives 97 and 98 and Initiative 154 on the Nov. 7 ballot, according to testimony in Great Falls District Court.

Montana already has constraints on state government spending. The law requires that each biennial budget be balanced. Congress can run into deficit spending, but not the Montana Legislature. Colorado, the only state that has enacted a law similar to CI-97, repealed it by popular vote because it was strangling public services and degrading the quality of life for people of that state. Similar initiatives have been invalidated in recent months in other states for the same reasons Montana judges found CI-97 invalid.

Montana voters who choose to vote absentee should be sure to make a mark against CI-97. The Montana Supreme Court, which will have the final say on the legal questions, won't rule until sometime in October whether the initiative's votes can be counted. There remains a possibility that CI-97 votes could be counted.

The deception revealed in the effort to get these measures on the ballot is an appalling perversion of Montana's treasured initiative process. CI-97 is a bad idea that deserves resounding rejection by all Montanans who believe in government integrity and accountability.