High court overturns law limiting initiatives

The Utah Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional a state law that limits the public's ability to call for ballot initiatives.

The court on Oct. 8 ruled that voters in Sevier County will get a chance to vote Nov. 4 on a measure that, if passed, would allow the county's residents to decide whether coal-fired power plants should be built in their backyard. Explaining its ruling in an opinion released Friday, the court said that the Legislature overstepped its authority in limiting initiative power.

Saying that its opinion was, in part, "for possible guidance to the Legislature," the court said that legislative power "is not vested solely" in the Senate and House of Representatives but also vested in the people of the state. While the Legislature is the "usual instrument" for people to express their collective will on public-policy matters, the state constitution "plainly contemplates an equivalent retention of power for direct action by citizens," it said in the opinion written by Justice Michael Wilkins.

The state's election code contains only one section "that purports to limit the substantive scope of citizen initiatives," Wilkins wrote. SB53, passed this year, added language to that code that, in part, said voters of any county, city or town may not initiate a land-use ordinance or a change in a land-use ordinance.

The language that was added to the code is unconstitutional, the high court said.

"Unless and until the people give the Legislature the constitutional authority to suspend or forbid the use of the initiative power, it cannot be done by statute," Wilkins wrote.

"Highly participatory democracy is at times inefficient, expensive and time-consuming. However, the initiative power, as with all other powers identified in our constitution, is a creature of the people. It is for the people to determine when, if and how it is to be modified. That much is clear."

A co-sponsor of SB53, Senate Minority Caucus Manager Brent H. Goodfellow, D-West Valley, said Friday that he had not read the court's opinion.

"But it was never my intent to take the power away from the people, because it's a constitutional right to petition their government in the form of a referendum of initiative," he said.

Instead, the bill was designed to clarify the law to protect the integrity of the local planning process "so we wouldn't have a hodgepodge of different kinds of zoning" in the state, he said.