Ah, the hazy, lazy days of summer.
Where did they go? All I’m looking at is the crazy days, as the
Legislature prepares to leave for its August vacation.
As usual, major issues were left until the last minute, when
constituents are distracted by summer.
There’s a bill that contains a three-year-retroactive increase in the
capital gains tax. People who thought their taxes were all paid for 2002
will be getting an unexpected bill for thousands of dollars. New
Massachusetts slogan: come to Massachusetts to invest, if you can endure
irrational, impulsive tax policies.
Senate Republicans attempted to add the income tax rollback to this
bill, arguing that state tax revenues have increased, so far, $1.1
billion over last year. However, though the "temporary" income tax hike
is now sixteen years old, and the ballot vote to cut the rate to 5% is
almost five years old, they had to settle for another "phase-down" when
and if a certain level is attained in various local aid accounts. I
predict these accounts will always be a few pennies short until the next
fiscal crisis raises our taxes again.
As if it’s not bad enough that this initiative law is being ignored by
the Legislature, the latest end-of-session outrage is the bill to kill
the initiative petition process altogether.
Senate 2158 forbids the use of signature collectors who are paid by the
signature, requires that all petitioners, including volunteers, sign the
petition with their address and phone number and swear under penalty of
perjury that they personally saw each person sign, and forces the
Secretary of State to publish the names of all signers as soon as the
petitions are turned into city and town halls for certification that
they are registered voters.
If you’ve never worked on a statewide petition drive, these provisions
may not seem terribly burdensome. As one who has worked on eighteen of
them, I assure you that this bill brings the petition process to an end,
except perhaps for extremely well-funded organizations who can pay for
all their signatures no matter what it costs. For the rest of us, who
run traditional, mostly volunteer campaigns, it will soon be impossible
to get a question on the ballot. And this, of course, is the point.
Most of the Legislature hates the petition process, which bypasses its
authority and lets the voters make or repeal laws. Using the pretext of
creating "anti-fraud safeguards," proponents of this bill make an
already difficult process impossible, and give petition opponents the
tools to harass signers.
Fraud has never been a problem with initiative petitions. People who
sign the petitions always have the title and official summary, drafted
by the Attorney General's office, in front of them. When the issue in on
the ballot, voters have access to its language and pro/con arguments in
the Secretary of State’s voter information booklet.
Proponents of this bill argue that some people once signed a petition on
gay marriage thinking it was a petition to prevent abuse of horses. If
they did, they probably shouldn’t be signing anything ever.
Petition forms are passed around, or laid out on tables at malls, with
various people overseeing them. With the official summary on top, there
is little enough space for signatures on each sheet; adding spaces for
five petitioners fills up a whole section. People who are in charge of a
table where several people are signing at once, must swear that each one
was observed.
There was similar requirement until 1985, at the beginning of the Golden
Age of House democracy. Speaker George Keverian’s choice for Chairman of
the Election Laws Committee, John Businger, quickly moved to repeal the
provision. Businger, a liberal, supported the petition process for
liberal and environmental groups, and therefore for all of us. He also
realized that this provision just encouraged perjury and disrespect for
the law. Though he’s no longer a legislator, he called me to offer his
assistance in defeating this new law.
The Secretary of State, William Galvin, is also opposing the bill. His
main concern is that once the names of signers is published, they can be
harassed by opponents of the petitions. Right now, when you sign a
petition, your privacy is protected, and opponents can't see the names
unless there is a court challenge of some sort.
During such a challenge to the income tax rollback petition, opponents
annoyed and subpoenaed innocent petitioners; they even pretended to be
me when people called to complain. If this bill passes, eventually
citizens will stop signing petitions, and the process will be dead. No
more will you get to vote on tax, environmental, animal rights, "good
government" and other reform issues.
Everyone knows that the pressure behind the passage of this bill comes
from the gay lobby, that wants to keep the "defense of marriage"
petition from getting its signatures this fall. Better gay activists
should use their energy to convince voters to support their position,
instead of insulting voters by implying they can't tell gay marriage
from horse abuse.
Barbara Anderson is executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation. Her syndicated columns appear weekly in the Salem
News, Newburyport Times, Gloucester Times, (Lawrence) Eagle-Tribune, and Lowell Sun; bi-weekly in the Tinytown Gazette; and occasionally in the Providence
Journal and other newspapers.