Strict initiative rules could deny Utahns their rights

As of this column's deadline, supporters of the citizens initiative petitions, Utahns for Ethical Government and Fair Boundaries, don't know if they met the high standard of 95,000 voter signatures to get their initiatives on the November ballot.

That petition turn-in deadline was 5 p.m. Thursday, April 15.

In fact, petition organizers may not know their fate for a week or more.

While reaching 95,000 signatures — 10 percent of the people who voted in the last gubernatorial election — is tough to meet, the really hard part is getting 10 percent of voters in 26 of 29 state Senate districts.

Let me assume in this commentary that neither UEG nor Fair Boundaries reaches the requirements, set in law by the Utah Legislature. Then I say someone or some group should sue, seeking a ruling from the Utah Supreme Court on whether the current voter signature standards are unrealistic, and thus denying regular citizens their right under the state constitution to petition their government through initiative.

The high court, in a ruling several years ago on initiative standards, warned the Legislature that if lawmakers make the initiative standard too difficult, then in reality they are denying the citizens' constitutional right.

You know what really gets me in all of this?

Conservative Utah legislators talk all the time about constitutional rights. They go on ad nauseam about them. But when there is a constitutional right they don't like — like citizens initiatives — well, then, it's a different story.

The best I can tell, both the UEG and Fair Boundaries efforts are just what the Utah Constitution-writers were aiming at — true grass-roots citizen efforts to address state law in areas that legislators, because of their own conflicts of interests, selfishness or otherwise bullheadedness, simply will not act on.

And if these petition folks, nearly all of them volunteers (Fair Boundaries is paying its top staffer a small salary) can't make the signature-collection goals, then I think the law is too stringent.

Utah legislators, especially the dominant Republicans, don't like either petition. They especially hate the UEG initiative, which would ban all gifts from lobbyists to legislators, cap campaign contributions, set up an independent ethics commission and adopt a stringent code of conduct for lawmakers.

Democratic legislators actually like the Fair Boundaries initiative. Republicans dislike that one, also.