Initiatives: The Monster That Threatens California Politics : Out of control, the process itself now needs to be reformed

Perversion, no less than providence, has its symmetries. One generation’s instrument of liberation hardens into the next’s oppressive burden. The best and most self-less intentions eventually succumb to the transforming subversion of avarice and self-interest, perhaps the most ingenious of human qualities.

There is no clearer example of this than the California initiative.

When the Progressive Hiram Johnson first campaigned for its adoption in 1911, he argued that only an instrument of direct democracy could free Sacramento from the grip of a vicious monopoly, the Southern Pacific Railroad. What was at stake, Johnson argued, was the fate of representative government itself.

He was correct.

THREATENING PROCESS: So, too, are those, like UC Berkeley political science professor Eugene C. Lee, who now argue that “in 1990, representative government is threatened not by a private monopoly, but by the initiative process itself. It . . . has produced occasional benefits but at an extravagant cost.” Among those costs, Lee contends, is an accelerating erosion of executive and legislative responsibility that contributes to Sacramento’s current gridlock.

Similarly, Lee’s colleague, Berkeley law professor Prebble Stolz, another longtime analyst of state government, has pointed out that litigation generated by initiatives is choking the courts. The state Supreme Court, for example can decide only about 140 cases per year and, if current trends persist, most of them soon will involve initiatives and death penalty appeals, many of which are themselves the result of enacting capital punishment statutes by initiative.

A recent Times Poll found that the public has its own strong reservations about the initiative business. According to that survey, more than seven in 10 Californians think the initiative process has “gone out of control”; 84% believe that “there are so many initiatives on the ballot with complex issues that an average voter cannot make an intelligent choice.”

Clearly, there is wide consensus in all segments of California society that something needs to done about the initiative crisis. Whether the will to do that can be discovered may depend in large measure on whether a constructive way can be found to reform the process: For when it comes to the initiative, it seems, almost all arguments are circular.

REFORM PROGRAM: However, several suggestions for reform currently being discussed are clearly worth considering:

--Initiatives are restricted by law to a single issue. But the Supreme Court has taken an expansive view of what that means. As a consequence, omnibus initiatives that propose wholesale overhaul of entire areas of state law--like Proposition 115--or hellishly complex regulatory schemes--like “Big Green”--have proliferated. Perhaps a constitutional convention should be convened to write a clear, restrictive, enforceable new version of the single issue provision.

--Make initiatives statutory changes rather than constitutional amendments. Then allow the Legislature and the governor to amend them after some specified period of time. This would provide more flexibility in dealing with the proposals’ unforeseen consequences. Most states with an initiative procedure already do this.

--Establish a nonpartisan, appointive panel to review initiatives before they go on the ballot to evaluate their impact and constitutionality and to make non-binding suggestions for improving their language.

--Then require the panel or the Legislature to hold meaningful, well-publicized public hearings on the measures.

--Adopt strict new guidelines requiring that the true financial sponsors of all initiatives be listed on the petitions circulated in the ballot pamphlet.

One suggestion--simple abolition--should be rejected outright. The initiative remains an indispensable check on legislative misrule. It is worth saving, even from its own excess.