Initiatives are consequences of slow work on ethics

As we move forward in the public debate over two new citizen initiatives, one argument to reject the measures will be that Utahns elect the Legislature, and if you don't like what the Legislature is doing, just vote out your House or Senate member.

And akin to that argument is that Utah shouldn't become like California — mired down in dozens of citizen initiatives on each general election ballot, with the accompanying mess of trying to legislate via huge statewide elections.

Utah could well have two initiatives on its 2010 ballot. One would set up an independent legislative ethics commission to investigate and recommend disciplinary actions to the Legislature for wayward lawmakers.

The other would set up an independent commission to recommend to legislators redistricting maps of congressional, legislative and State School Board districts every 10 years after a census.

Like every republican form of government, we elect good people to the Legislature and ask them to make decisions for us, for we can't vote ourselves on each law or budget that government deals with.

Twenty-six states and one U.S. territory allow citizens to change law and/or their constitutions through a ballot initiative.

The Utah Constitution allows citizens to adopt a new law or change/repeal an existing one, but initiatives can't change the constitution itself.

Opponents of the two citizen initiatives, soon to be out for voter signatures, say there is danger in the initiative process — that Utah could become like some other initiative-crazy states where as many as 70 initiatives have appeared on the ballot in recent years.

But in fact, Utah has not seen a rash of initiatives.

A recent study by the National Conference of State Legislatures shows that in nearly 100 years, only 20 initiatives have been on Utah's ballot. And many of those, like liquor-by-the-drink in the late 1960s and term limits and removing the sales tax from food in the last 20 years, were voted down by citizens.

Over roughly the same time frame, Oregon has seen 349 ballot initiatives and California 331, the NCSL study found.

The idea that a state's citizens could draft and pass laws themselves via petition and initiative — thus bypassing the legislative body — came into popularity in the late 1890s and early 20th century. Utah's initiative law has been changed several times, including recently when legislators decided to make the petition-gathering process more difficult.