Projo Politics Blog

The bumpy road to place voter initiative on the ballot is a familiar one -- going on more than 20 years -- but this time around, the journey took a side route to Vegas.

At a hearing Wednesday, March 14, 2007 before the House Judiciary Committee, House Minority Whip Nicholas Gorham raised his annual call for voter initiative. His bill would amend the state Constitution to allow voters to end-run the legislature by placing issues on the ballot directly, through a petition process.

The opponents, including Common Cause Rhode Island, and lobbyists from the state Association of Fire Fighters, the AFL-CIO, National Education Association/Rhode Island, and the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, all said voter initiative could be dangerous and allow special interests with large bankrolls to bamboozle voters into voting for bad laws.

“Representative democracy,” where voters elect legislators to represent their views and make laws, is more efficient, they said.

But Gorham, former state Rep. Rod Driver and voter initiative proponent Harry Staley, of Westerly, all pointed to the Narragansett Indian casino and its deal with Harrah’s as proof that the voters could stand up to big money.

“What happened last fall? Harrah’s came in and spent millions of dollars. How many people did they brainwash?” Gorham said. “What did that prove? That concern about voter initiative is nothing but folly.”

Judiciary Committee member Timothy Williamson, who unsuccessfully pushed for the Las Vegas-style casino in his town of West Warwick, didn’t look at Gorham during his digs about the casino’s failure at the November election. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the Narragansett Indian-Harrah’s casino. Nor did he look up as Bev Clay, of Operation Clean Government, spoke in favor of voter initiative by pointing out how voters stood up to gambling interests in 1992. (The General Assembly later voted on its own to expand gambling.)

Finally, Williamson said, “It’s amazing how we can’t get away from the casino issue.”

No vote was taken. But hold onto your hats.

This year’s General Assembly session has not yet hit the halfway mark and, as this hearing demonstrated, legislative leaders are already starting to throw their own public-notice rules to the winds.

The public got only one-day’s late-afternoon notice that the House Judiciary Committee intended to take up Rep. Roger Picard’s version of the voter-initiative bill.

House rules require 48 hours’ public notice, except when they don’t. Got it?

More specifically, they say: “The chair of every committee shall post in print and electronically at least 48 hours prior to any committee meeting a list by number and title of the bills and resolutions to be heard at that meeting. … A committee shall not hear any said bill or resolution without such notice except by the consent of a majority of its members and with at least one days’ notification to the principal sponsor.”

According to House spokesman Larry Berman, the chairman -- Rep. Donald Lally, D-Narragansett -- invoked the rule after realizing Picard’s bill had inadvertently been left off the notice for the meeting where another voter initiative bill, sponsored by Gorham, of Coventry, was being considered.

Berman said “Representative Picard thought it was appropriate to have his bill heard as well. He signed a form which waived the notification rule, and no members of Judiciary or the public objected.”

amilkovi@projo.com

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