By Glenn Farley – Contributing writerMost Arizonans are probably familiar with how a bill becomes a law, if you've seen clips from the memorable “I’m just a bill” Schoolhouse Rock! cartoon.
The bill then heads for the entire legislature, for another round of debate and amendment, this time by the entire legislative body, before being subjected to a final vote in its final form on the floor of the chamber. With ballot initiatives, there are no committee hearings, amendments, or deliberative debates. Voters may not have heard of the initiative before seeing it on their ballots and are forced to make decisions on potentially complex legislative issues based on short titles and three-line ballot descriptions.
Though ultimately found unconstitutional, the Proposition 208 income tax increase was so poorly written as to be effectively neutered by the legislature a year after voters passed it. This clearly was not what the authors intended, but because of the Voter Protection Act, they had no easy or cheap way of fixing it. From that perspective the courts did them and all of us a favor by tossing it altogether.
The truth is this ill-conceived measures preys on cursory voter sympathies in the voting booth but should have been introduced and deliberated at the legislature via the normal lawmaking process so questions like this could be answered and issues resolved through amendment and consensus-building.
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