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Stories Posted on May 13, 2008
Dan Walters: Is Initiative Process the Cause or Result of State's Malaise?
Category: Initiative and Referendum · State: California · Source: Sacramento Bee
The old philosophical argument over whether the chicken or the egg first emerged from the primordial ooze has a political counterpart in California's circular debate over the initiative process. Is directly presenting proposed laws and constitutional amendments to voters a safety valve by which they can do what the Legislature is unwilling or unable to do, the cause of the Capitol's endemic inability to function effectively, or, perhaps, both a symptom of our political malaise and a cure that worsens the disease? It's been nearly a century since reformist Gov. Hiram Johnson and the Legislature adopted the initiative and other reforms to break the political stranglehold of the Southern Pacific Railroad - dubbed "The Octopus" in a muckraking novel of the era. But the initiative's use as a major policy tool is of much more recent vintage, dating from the enactment of Proposition 13, the landmark property tax limit measure, 30 years ago next month.