Smelling the Sizzle on the Ballot

A new season of Direct Democracy approaches. This fall the California ballot will contain a platoon of 18 new propositions for our scrutiny. The official ballot pamphlet, when it arrives in the mail, will probably weigh as much as a small telephone book.

Big Green will be there, of course, all 16,000 words of it. And so will the booze tax--no, excuse me, two booze taxes--and a scheme to put convicts to work at something other than stamping license plates.

This process is our gift to American politics. California has made the initiative famous and we’re supposed to love it. Why is it, then, that our initiative mania seems to grow a little ragged around the edges? Why does yet another trolley-car load of these things suddenly inspire more dread than relish?

I have a theory. The theory holds that we have begun to suspect the truth about our efforts to regulate industries, stop crime, and rewrite state budgets at the ballot box. The truth is this: By and large, we the people don’t know what we’re doing .

The results of not knowing what we’re doing can show up in multiple ways. With insurance reform, we got suckered into voting for a legal swamp from which there seems to be no escape. With Proposition 65 we thought we were getting clean water and instead got cancer-warning signs posted in bars and gas stations.

There are more of these examples, lots more, but let’s jump to the present. On the fall ballot there’s a measure that shows how easy it is for an initiative to slither into the murky thickets.

I’m talking about the Forests Forever initiative. And about an unintended consequence for a small timber company on the central coast. We’ll get to the timber company later. First, the initiative.

The framers of Forests Forever, otherwise known as Proposition 130, intend nothing less than the reform of the logging industry. Their specific target is the redwood companies of the North Coast, whose alleged sins are well known.

These companies stand accused of plundering California’s patrimonial forests, the only forests in the world where the coastal redwood thrives. The accusations are not trivial and there is much truth behind them. Even the U.S. Forest Service, the toady of the industry, concedes that the North Coast has been over-cut for many years.

That brings us to Point 1: The emotional tug of many initiatives is real because the issues are real. The Forests Forever campaign constitutes an effort to confront a problem that our flaccid Legislature has dodged for many years.

So far, so good. In the case of Forests Forever, these good intentions evolved into a regulatory document of 23 sections and many thousands of words. Forests Forever, in effect, rewrites the state law governing timber practices. As the fall wears on, however, you will hear little about this intricate web of proposed regulation.

Instead, you will hear about the proposition’s plan to purchase groves of ancient redwoods with a $710-million kitty. And you will hear about the need to “end clear-cutting.”

Point 2: The core of most initiatives, found in the fine print, is usually ignored in favor of one or two flashy points. We are easily bored by the fine print and that is the beginning of our ruin. Our juvenile attention span allows the sponsors to sell the sizzle while hiding the steak.

Of course, if the initiative sponsors are exceedingly clever, and extraordinarily honest, they can match the fine print to the general spirit of the initiative. They can produce a steak that tastes as good as the sizzle smells.

But our history shows this rarely happens. The fine print has a way of assuming a life of its own, emerging like a doppelganger to haunt us after the campaign is past.

That gets us back to the small timber company. Here in Santa Cruz, Big Creek Lumber Co. says the fine print has, indeed, gone awry. It says Forests Forever will drive it out of business.

Normally this might be dismissed as industry hysteria. But not this time. Big Creek happens to be the most praised timber company in the state, widely known for its conscientious logging. In fact, the initiative sponsors used Big Creek as a model of proper logging when writing the fine print.

Somehow the signals got crossed. Bud McCrary, owner of Big Creek, says some of his basic techniques would be prohibited in many harvest areas. Big Creek’s way with the woods, so lauded by environmentalists, would become a thing of the past.

And so, Point 3: Beware the best of intentions. Surely, the Forests Forever people did not want to make an enemy out of Big Creek, a good guy logger. But they did, and therein lies a cautionary tale for us all.