Washington
Washington State initiative promoter Tim Eyman doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the political Left on most issues, but, as a proponent of voting rights for people of every political persuasion, he is standing up for the right of a progressive group to place an issue on the ballot in Spokane.
A group of local residents, led by Tom Jamieson and Ginny Scantlebury, have joined forces with the bag ban activist group Save Our Choice to seek repeal of Shoreline’s new plastic bag ban.
Ordinance No. 653, which regulates the distribution of plastic and paper carryout bags by Shoreline retail establishments was adopted by the Shoreline City Council on April 29, 2013. The new regulations become effective on February 1, 2014.
Read More: here
In an April 26 editorial, The Spokesman-Review advanced several arguments on why it thought the Clean and Fair Elections Ordinance should not become the law in Spokane. As a member of the group that sponsored that ballot initiative, I assure you we are anxious to respond to those arguments.
However, an election campaign is the time for that. The issue at hand now is whether or not the voters should have the right to vote on this at all. It appears that some on the Spokane City Council and The Spokesman-Review editorial board feel they should not; that this initiative should be stopped before it goes on the ballot.
Read More: Here
Along the banks of the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, citizens are taking the city’s charter to court – at least, the city attorney’s interpretation of it.
Sponsors of an initiative on light rail won a recent court case overturning a state law on duplicate signatures and providing the measure with enough valid signatures to qualify, Vancouver City Attorney Ted Gathe declared the city would not allow the measure to appear on this November’s ballot because it was “ambiguous and susceptible of multiple interpretations.” Gathe argues that violates the city charter, which states: “The proposed ordnance shall be expressed in clear and unambiguous language and so that its entire effect is apparent on its face.”
nitiative promoter Tim Eyman filed a ballot measure Wednesday to make all tax hikes passed by the Washington state Legislature expire after a year.
Under the initiative, the one-year limit would go away if state lawmakers pass a constitutional amendment to require a legislative supermajority to raise taxes and eliminate tax breaks. If passed by the Legislature by a two-thirds majority in each chamber, the amendment would need a simple majority of voters to be enacted.
Washington initiative guru Time Eyman is back in the saddle again with a new anti-tax initiative, filed on Wednesday.
The initiative seeks to curb tax hikes by giving any new taxes a one-year expiration date. However, Eyman gives Evergreen State legislators an easy way out. Written into the ballot measure is a provision removing the one-year expiration on new taxes IF the legislature passes a constitutional amendment reestablishing a 2/3rds majority vote in order to pass new tax hikes.
In the city of Vancouver, Washington, opponents of a local light rail system have secured a victory for petitioners.
A Cowlitz County judge, Stephen M. Warning, ruled against a law requiring that on municipal petitions, “…signatures, including the original, of any person who has signed a petition two or more times shall be stricken.”
Under this law, a petition filed against the proposed light rail system fell short by 32 signatures due to those who signed more than once being thrown out, including the person’s original signature. The city government had concluded that since the petition fell short of the required number of signatures, no vote would be held on the light rail.
Striking at the heart of a city of Vancouver argument against a citywide vote on light rail, a Cowlitz County Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that when people sign their names to a petition, the original signature should be counted, no matter how many times they sign it again.
Judge Stephen M. Warning ruled in favor of a group of 75 light-rail opponents from Vancouver who challenged a law stating that, on municipal petitions, “signatures, including the original, of any person who has signed a petition two or more times shall be stricken.”
Read More: from The Columbian
A proposal from serial petitioner Tim Eyman to make it easier to launch future local initiatives met little opposition in its introduction to the state House of Representatives Tuesday.
Initiative 517 would give petitioners more time to gather signatures, as well as carving out broad new protections for initiative sponsors and signature gatherers. Legislators hearing the bill mostly focused their questions on a clause that would give signature gatherers a right to be on parts of private property that could be considered “public forums,” such as privately owned sidewalks in front of stores.
Read More: Here
Washington’s State Supreme Court ruled 6-3 yesterday to strike down a law passed by voters which requires a two-thirds vote in the Legislature or a vote of the people to increase taxes. The decision specifically overturns a 2010 initiative, but comes after two decades of voters passing the same basic initiative and seeing it repealed by legislators.
The state Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier for state lawmakers to increase taxes.
The court, in a 6-3 ruling, decided a state law requiring a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to increase taxes is unconstitutional.
“Our holding today is not a judgment on the wisdom of requiring a supermajority for the passage of tax legislation,” the court said in its majority opinion.
Stonewall Jackson Bird had never supported a Tim Eyman initiative. But earlier this month the Bellingham progressive rode to Olympia to speak on behalf of Eyman’s newest effort, Initiative 517, the “initiative on initiatives.”
“Stoney” Bird had been a corporate attorney in London. He became disenchanted, moved to the Skagit Valley, and later to Bellingham. He says that for a long time he “wanted to find a way to use my corporate legal experience for something important.”
Last year he found his cause: stopping coal trains.
Read more at the Seattle Times
For years, the courts have said, based on the law as it exists today, that there are certain issues the people can decide by local initiative and certain issues they cannot (red-light cameras not OK, banning local casinos OK, banning coal trains not OK, etc).
But up to this point, advisory votes on issues have occurred and been permitted because they simply let the people express a non-binding opinion that the local government can ignore or accept. Since advisory votes don’t interfere with local governments’ legislative power, they’ve been OK … until yesterday.
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Previous efforts to get pro-initiative measures on the ballot in Washington have been dodgy at best. The last one to make it through with a full Senate vote was 19 years ago in 1994. This term seems to be different with Tim Eyman’s Initiative 517 and other proposals progressing through committee and being divvied up into 4 easily-digested bills.
The ease with which I-517 has progressed has something to do with the new Senate majority. Chairwoman Pam Roach (R-Auburn) has been a supporter of I-517 and pushed for its passage out of committee.
Here’s one small measure of the difference the new leadership in the Senate has made – sometime soon, the full Senate likely will vote on bills that buttress the initiative process, rather than throwing acid on it. They might even include this year’s biggie, Initiative 517, the so-called ”˜initiative on initiatives’ from ballot-measure promoter Tim Eyman, which would extend the time for signatures to be gathered and establish the right of signature gatherers to canvass in public places.