While serving as a step in the right direction, a new law involving how ballot initiatives are presented to voters stops well short of where it needed to go.
Gov. Jay Inslee last week signed into law House Bill 2055, which will insert fiscal impact statements into the “for” and “against” arguments that accompany information about ballot initiatives in the state Voters’ Pamphlet. The impact statements are written by the Office of Financial Management in consultation with the attorney general and the secretary of state, and they now will be in a more conspicuous position.
The impetus for such a bill — which passed the House with a 96-0 vote and the Senate by a 45-1 vote — is easy to delineate. Last November, voters statewide approved Initiative 1351 to reduce class sizes in K-12 public schools. The measure passed with 51 percent of the vote, although no funding mechanism was identified — and although a thorough reading of the information provided by the Voters’ Pamphlet revealed that passage would cost taxpayers an estimated $4.7 billion over the next five years.
Because voters did, indeed, approve I-1351, lawmakers are now wrestling with the initiative. Democrats who are the majority in the House and Republicans who hold sway in the Senate apparently have agreed to fund smaller class sizes in grades K-3, but no plan to deal with higher grades has passed muster. Meanwhile, the issue has been piled atop the state Supreme Court ruling in McCleary v. Washington, which calls for full state funding of public schools.
I-1351 highlighted two problems inherent with the initiative process. It allowed voters to hand lawmakers an unfunded mandate while bypassing the vetting process that comes with legislative debate; and it allowed voters to approve a feel-good measure with little regard for the costs, which only appeared deep in the text of the Voters’ Pamphlet and received no mention on the ballot itself.
Because of those shortcomings, a proposed constitutional amendment that appeared during this year’s legislative session as Senate Joint Resolution 8201 would be preferable to the law Inslee signed last week. The proposal, which received bipartisan support in the Senate but did not receive a floor vote in the House, would require fiscal impact information to appear on the ballot itself. It also would require a tax-cutting initiative to carry a statement that tells voters that cutting taxes would result in a reduction of services or a tax increase elsewhere. That resolution has been revived for the Legislature’s special session, but it is unlikely to receive any attention as lawmakers deal with more pressing issues.
The reaction in Olympia to I-1351 and attempts to tweak the initiative system have been met with consternation in some circles. Initiative maven Tim Eyman is an outspoken opponent of SJR 8201, and supporters of the class-size initiative resent the implication that voters were unaware of its financial impact. But the message to those who wish to preserve a system that gives voters a necessary check on the Legislature should be clear: Placing unfunded mandates on the ballot is irresponsible.
Washington’s initiative system has served the public well for more than a century, and it is crucial to the state’s system of government. But saying the system is important is not the same as suggesting that it is sacrosanct. Improvements can, and should, be made in the amount of information voters receive regarding a ballot measure. The law signed last week by Gov. Inslee helps in that regard, but there still is room for further improvement.
