Proposed new hurdles to state question process could be legislative overreach (Capitol Update)

Senate Bill 1027 by Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, makes big changes in the initiative petition process. It cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and is a bill that’s worth keeping an eye on.

Article 5, Section 1, of the Oklahoma Constitution, provides “The Legislative authority of the State shall be vested in a Legislature, consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives; but the people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and amendments to the Constitution and to enact or reject the same at the polls independent of the Legislature, and also reserve power at their own option to approve or reject at the polls any act of the Legislature.”

Article 5, Section 2, says, “The first power reserved by the people is the initiative, and eight per centum of the legal voters shall have the right to propose any legislative measure, and fifteen per centum of the legal voters shall have the right to propose amendments to the Constitution by petition…. The ratio and per centum of legal voters hereinbefore stated shall be based upon the total number of votes cast at the last general election for the Office of Governor.”

The legislature was given the duty to “make suitable provisions for carrying into effect the provisions of this article.”

Several bills have been proposed in recent years to limit the people’s power to legislate, which would amplify the legislature’s powers. The current version of SB 1027 could certainly fall into that category. The bill, as originally filed by Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, was a simple bill prohibiting the use of “euphemisms, words, or phrases regarded in popular parlance as code words, or an apparent attempt to deceive voters.”

However, a proposed committee substitute was filed replacing Sen. Paxton as principal author and showing Sen. Bullard as author. Sen. Paxton remains as co-author. The committee substitute contains arduous requirements that will be a significant barrier to the people in exercising their rights to the initiative.

For example, the bill requires a statement in the “gist of the proposition” declaring whether the proposed measure will have a fiscal impact on the state and if so, the potential source of funding including…imposition of a new tax, increase in existing tax or elimination of service.”

Besides being a difficult, expensive – and sometimes impossible – prediction to make, the requirement will provide ample opportunities for litigation keeping the petition off the ballot. Requirements of the provision could give people the impression they are voting on a tax increase when it is not necessarily so.

Also, and most importantly, there is a provision in the bill that would make it nearly impossible to successfully gather signatures for an initiative petition within the statutory 90-day period. The bill includes a new requirement that only 10 percent of the signatures each can come from Oklahoma County and Tulsa County, and the remaining 80 percent must come from the rest of the state with only four percent of the signatures from any one county.

That would mean currently that for the 92,963 required signatures to pass a law by initiative petition, the signatures of only 9,296 registered voters in Oklahoma County, which has 476,122 registered voters, could be counted.

Similarly, of the 406,850 registered voters in Tulsa County, only 9,293 signatures could be counted. And no more than 3,719 registered voters could be counted in any other single county, even in counties such as Comanche County with 64,801 and Canadian County with 109,172 registered voters. The result would be a logistical nightmare throughout the state to get an initiative petition on the ballot.

In other provisions, the bill bestows initial authority to determine the legality of the gist of the proposition on the secretary of state – who is an appointee of the governor – in place of the attorney general, who is a statewide elected official who already has that authority under current law.

The bill creates a new requirement that anyone who circulates a petition on behalf of the petitioners must be a qualified Oklahoma voter, which will limit the availability of canvassers, either paid or volunteer.

The bill requires paid petition circulators to disclose their employers to the Secretary of State and bans paying circulators by signature. It also prohibits anyone not living or doing business in the state from contributing to the compensation of a petition distributor. It requires that an entity employing a petition circulator must “follow federal labor standards,” but it does not identify those standards.

It also provides that by signing the petition, a signer is attesting that he/she has read the petition, or by the circulator that he/she has read the petition to the signer, a provision that could make a liar out of many petition signers. If an Oklahoma voter is satisfied that he/she has enough information to sign a petition, why should he/she be required to stand in place to read the petition or have it read?

SB 1027 could be overreach by the legislature into the people’s reserved right to legislate. Perhaps legislators will take a second look as the bill moves through the process.