Sometimes you wish you were wrong. In these pages last month, I worried that Attorney General Kamala Harris would bias the title and summary for Mayor Chuck Reed’s proposed pension reform measure before it could go before voters, a concern that proved prophetic with her summary. Once again, a single person has exerted incredible power over California’s ballot box. Mayor Reed is now considering whether to even move forward with signature-gathering because of Harris’ framing.
Pete Peterson
In the wake of several municipal bankruptcies and increasing unfunded public sector pension and benefit obligations, Reed’s measure is meant, not to automatically dismantle agreements (as union advocates howl), but to offer California governments the constitutional breathing room to re-negotiate these relationships prospectively – leaving current retirees unaffected, and allowing accrued benefits for current employees to stand.
Last month, Jon Ortiz in the SacBee noted that focus group testing found that using the word “eliminate” in the summary of Reed’s measure would create a “visceral negative response from voters.” So what did Harris say in her summary? Reed’s measure would “eliminate constitutional protections” of public sector workers. Nice to see you use that market research, Attorney General.
But it doesn’t stop there. Harris made sure to list only the most popular categories of public servants who might be affected by the measure: “teachers, nurses, and peace officers.” As Joel Fox points out, this is almost a verbatim repeat of descriptors she used to bias another proposed pension reform measure back in 2012, which even drew the ire of the Los Angeles Times. Fox rightly notes, Harris’ conveniently neglects to mention “tax collectors or parking enforcement officers” who would also fall under the initiative’s jurisdiction.
Following on Harris’ attempt to sink Prop 32 through the same tactic (later stopped by a Sacramento Superior Court Judge), we have seen enough of the AG’s…ahem…unbiased treatment of the ballot box.
The attorney general has proven herself incapable of handling this immense responsibility in a non-partisan way.
Maybe it’s time for a little “democracy” to help our democracy?
In August, 2012, I was part of a team of observers (which included our terming out Secretary of State Bowen) to the State of Oregon’s Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) process in action. In simple terms, the CIR convenes a “citizens’ jury” of 24 voters over a period of several days who learn about an initiative from proponents and opponents, then compose their own consensus “Citizens’ Statement” that goes in to the state’s ballot information packet.
I have already come out in favor of testing such a process here in California, and have made it part of my “5 Point Plan”, but our AG’s recent machinations introduce a new possibility for a form of CIR:
I propose we convene a group of California voters – a “Citizens’ Title/Summary Jury” – to compose the title and summary for all initiatives that would be constitutional amendments. It could be composed – somewhat like the Citizens Redistricting Commission- of a group of 14 voters (5 D’s, 5 R’s, 4 NPP’s) who would hear from both the proponent and an opponent of the initiative, and over the period of 2-3 days would compose their own title and summary. It’s possible such an effort could be conducted online as well.
This could be offered as an option to all initiative sponsors who doubted the Attorney General (and this would also apply to any future Republican in that office) could provide an unbiased title/summary.
For many of the same reasons why Californians supported the creation of the Citizens Redistricting Commission (Prop 11/2008), the time has come to take the power to slant an initiative/referendum out of the hands of the Attorney General.
Here’s the irony: if this idea (or something like it) were to become a ballot initiative, it would have to get its title and summary from….the AG! I can see it now: “This measure would eliminate the constitutional rights of the Attorney General to control the ballot initiative process.”