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California voters smacked down Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this month by rejecting almost all of his ballot measures – now activists are brewing up their own ballot measures and looking for revenge against the entire state legislature. Here are just a few of the measures being cooked up, courtesy of the San Jose Mercury News:
- Gabriella Holt, president and CEO of the newly formed Citizens for California Reform, filed an initiative last week to convert the Legislature from full time to part time, arguing that they have failed in their most fundamental full-time task of producing on-time budgets and have lost touch with the people in their districts.
- Another initiative in the works would require lawmakers to sign, under penalty of perjury, an oath that they actually read bills before voting for them. It would also force them to sign an oath saying they had not engaged in vote trading for the bill in front of them.
- Other groups are calling for universal voter registration and instant runoffs.
- Already, the June 2010 primary ballot has one reform measure: to switch to open primaries, which would allow voters to cross party lines in the primaries out of which the top two contenders — regardless of party — would face off in the general election.
There are also some groups pushing to eliminate the 2/3 budget vote requirement in the State Legislature and others who are attacking Prop. 13. That is not good news. But the voters clearly are ready and willing to keep attacking our awful politicians, from both parties. About a third of the voters have quit the two parties and filed as decline to state voters – and still the stupid politicians don’t get it.
Let the tax revolt continue then – until we either boot out these politicians or at least handcuff those who are in power now. Why stop at making them part-time? We should be going after their perks and staffers too!
Art,
I strongly support the idea of part time legislators with one caveat. Those same legislators should not be allowed to go home to act as lobbyists or “government affairs” agents in their home districts. If that were allowed the problem would become worse, not better.
That makes sense, Shawn, but there would be 00s of loopholes for these snakes to crawl thru…and some free speech issues as well. And don’t they do it now? How is this enforceable?
Part time….3 months every OTHER year. $12,000 per term…..should take care of most problems
Part-time, meeting every 2 years, unpaid.
Just like the old days.
Unpaid? Cook I like your idea better….lrts make all of the commissions unpaid as well
Shawn, send a message to Gabriella Holt with your suggestion.
Rather than trying to restrict lobbying (for the reasons that Lurk mentioned), how about requiring transparency and letting the media, bloggers and public do their jobs with that information.