PHOENIX (AP) - The Arizona Senate will decide whether to ask voters next year to repeal or revise a 1998 constitutional amendment that prevents lawmakers from changing or getting rid of voter-approved laws.
Two measures referring the questions to the ballot passed the House late Thursday, with majority Republicans arguing that the Voter Protection Act needs to be revisited because it ties lawmakers’ hands.
Democrats called the measures part of a broad attack on Arizonans’ rights to bypass the Legislature and create their own laws.
The House passed the bills on 35-25 party-line votes and also sent legislation to the Senate that would change how companies that circulate petitions pay their workers.
That bill by Republican Rep. Vince Leach of Tucson bars paying employees per signature, extends the time to bring a court challenge to an initiative and allows anyone to file that challenge. Now, the law generally bars such challenges.
The moves are part of a concerted Republican effort to change the initiative process and remove constitutional protections for voter-enacted laws. They come after business interests and GOP lawmakers expressed deep discontent over voter passage of a minimum wage increase in November and the costs to battle a failed voter initiative that would have legalized marijuana.
The House delayed debate on the most contentious initiative proposal, which would force petition gatherers to collect signatures in each of the 30 legislative districts. House attorneys raised possible constitutional issues, sidelining the measure by Republican Rep. Don Shooter of Yuma. An attorney review will not be complete until next week, Shooter said. It also would require voter approval.
The House attorney, Tim Fleming, said Shooter’s proposal to require 10 percent of the voters in each legislative district to sign petitions may violate the one-man, one-vote principle, which says one person’s voting power should be roughly equivalent to another person’s within the state. That’s because there may be more or fewer voters in each district, so some areas may require many more signatures for an initiative to qualify.
Democrats and voting rights groups decry the proposals as an assault on voters’ right to make their own laws. Republicans argue that the changes are needed to prevent fraud and make signatures easier to challenge, and they dispute that they’re trying to make it harder for citizens to write their own laws.
House Speaker J.D. Mesnard said all three proposals honor the democratic process.
“This is a proposal to the voters,” Mesnard said during debate on repealing the Voter Protection Act. “This measure is inherently democratic because only the voters can choose to pass it. They may choose it they may not.”
The two House-passed proposals by Republican Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita of Scottsdale would repeal or modify the Voter Protection Act. One of Ugenti-Rita’s bills would ask voters to repeal the act, while the other would exempt laws the Legislature refers to voters from its provisions.
Republicans say the act, passed in 1998 after lawmakers rescinded some voter-approved measures, locks in spending even during economic downturns. It prevents changes that do not “further the purpose” of an initiative or referendum and only allow changes with a three-fourths vote of the Legislature.
Democrats said voters amended the state Constitution to bar lawmakers from making changes for good reason.
“The reason … is the Legislature is constantly overturning the will of the voters,” said Democratic Rep. Ken Clark of Phoenix.
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