From Deseret News archives:
Citizen initiatives will have to include a price tag
Legislators can repeal laws with too hefty a price tag
Legislative leaders passed a bill in the final hours of this year's session that requires full disclosure of all financial ramifications of initiatives. The information must appear on the signature petition sheet as well as on the ballot. The measure will give legislators more leeway to repeal an initiative law if the fiscal impact is greater than expected.
"It's a way to strengthen the integrity of the initiative process," said Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Provo. "The financial ramifications ought to be known to anyone who signs (a petition.)"
The Governor's Office of Planning and Budget will prepare the initial fiscal impact statement on an initiative and will be responsible for creating a final dollar figure after an initiative passes.
If that final number is more than 15 percent higher than the initial estimate, the Legislature has the authority to nix the initiative-driven legislation.
The original version of HB142 also required fluoride petitions to advertise fiscal ramifications, but a Senate amendment earlier this week removed the mention of fluoride from the bill.
Hughes said that the catalyst for his bill was an open space bond proposal that gathered nearly 130,000 signatures supporting Initiative 1 last fall. While the petition touted clean air and open space, Hughes said, many petition signers were unaware that it had a price tag of $150 million in state debt and a .05-cent sales tax increase.
An informal survey by the Utah Farm Bureau Federation of 300 petition signers found that only about 3 percent of them knew they were signing up for increased taxes and a higher state debt burden.
"It's intuitive when you get a clipboard with a vague, generally agreeable concept, you would sign it," Hughes said. "That's what's happening in our initiative process right now. What is lost to many citizens is the cost."
A second initiative bill also passed by the Legislature this session aims to make it easier to verify signatures on petitions, which was also a problem with the open space initiative last fall.
Sen. Beverly Evans, R-Altamont, sponsor of SB11, said it gives petition signers the option of providing their birth date and address along with their names on a petition. If a name doesn't exactly match voter registration information, the added information "allows clerks more flexibility to go back and verify signatures," Evans said.
E-mail: estewart@desnews.com
