Legislature(1999 - 2000)
02/11/1999 08:08 AM House STA
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
HJR 7 CONST AM: INITIATIVE/REFERENDUM PETITIONS HB 45 INITIATIVE/REFERENDUM PETITIONS Number 0300 CHAIR JAMES announced she would like to hear both HJR 7, "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the State of Alaska relating to initiative and referendum petitions," and HB 45, "An Act relating to initiative and referendum petitions; and providing for an effective date," together. CHAIR JAMES called for a brief at-ease at 8:25 a.m. and called the meeting back to order at approximately 8:26 a.m. Number 0328 REPRESENTATIVE BILL WILLIAMS read his sponsor statement: HB 45 and its companion measure, HJR 7, were introduced to ensure statewide support of an issue prior to being put before the voters. The legislation would require signatures from 15% of those who voted in the preceding general election in at least 75% of the house districts for a question to reach the ballot. Currently, because of our population dispersal, initiative sponsors can easily gather the required signatures from single areas of the state. The current system does not require a statewide perspective in determining which topics will appear on the ballot as amendments to state law. I am concerned that the whole of Alaska will suffer as question after question, of limited perspective, is placed on the ballot. I urge you to support this legislation. REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS referred to the committee packet which includes the summary of signatures gathered for an initiative vote on the 1998 ballot sorted by election districts, including the number of signatures gathered and whether the election district would have qualified under HB 7 or HJR 45, and the section of the constitution to be amended by this legislation. Also included is a table showing the percentage of the state population in Anchorage since 1990, tables showing the population of Anchorage from 1930 through 1970, a chart showing the population of the growth rate in Alaska's five largest boroughs, and excerpts of the Constitutional Conventional minutes regarding those subjects. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN asked Representative Williams what recent petitions or initiative issues, that have been on the ballot, does he feel that maybe would not have passed if this were in place? REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS replied, "I wouldn't say any of the initiatives wouldn't happen. What I'm saying is that you get a better perspective from the whole state rather than one area. As you can see on the billboard (initiative) for instance, that was on this ballot, most of it came from one area and that was Anchorage. And, I'm sure that it may have passed, but what I'd like to see is these people that are getting the signatures, that they have to get an overall state perspective rather than just Anchorage. Anchorage is, as you see is, we have an influx of new people each year based on out-of-state (indisc.) gather in the Anchorage area." REPRESENTATIVE OGAN asked, "In order for this bill to be enacted we have to - the constitution would have to be amended." REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS said he believes that's how it reads. Number 0389 REPRESENTATIVE OGAN said, "If I'm interpreting it right, that means that in two-thirds of the districts in the state, 15 percent of those people within two-thirds of those districts will have to sign the petition." REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS agreed. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN remarked it's currently 10 percent within two-thirds. REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS added, 10 percent of those who voted in the last election. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN reiterated, "If they get one person, in two-thirds of the districts, and 10 percent of the aggregate of the people that voted in the election, that qualifies (indisc.). Is that correct?" REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS replied that he believes that's correct. REPRESENTATIVE HUDSON asked if 15 percent is an arbitrary number. REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS responded that it is. Number 0405 REPRESENTATIVE HUDSON stated, "I really like this. ... I have thought all along when we got to for example issues like the wolf snaring and the billboard initiatives, and things of this nature, they are important public policy. And expanding those to a broader required sector of the state of Alaska and a little higher percentage of them - we're only talking 15 percent of the registered voters as opposed to 10 percent." CHAIR JAMES pointed that out Anchorage holds approximately one-half of the population of the state. If you don't live in Anchorage, you're in a minority population and we need to have our voices heard as well - to spread it around the state is a real benefit to that. She mentioned we've seen the state of California manage their government by their public vote and, in our representative form of government, that is not the way it was intended to work. CHAIR JAMES noted she is very supportive of this issue so everyone's voice can be heard and referenced legislation that was introduced last year regarding petitioners being paid for obtaining signatures. She said it was found, by court cases, that we were limited in that area, people can pay people to do things. Chair James said she believes it's distressing when it can affect public policy. However, we want to protect our rights and this extends our rights to assure the minority has a place in that. REPRESENTATIVE COGHILL indicated he likes the 15 percent. However, in districts that are large but sparsely populated, the ability to get 15 percent might be a problem. REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS pointed out a good example would be the district that covers Metlakatla to Kodiak. He said he believes it would work with the types of communication and the transportation system that currently exist. REPRESENTATIVE KERTTULA said she doesn't believe the Division of Elections can accept fax or E-mail votes for petition signatures. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN asked if a study has been done in Alaska's four largest communities [Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Ketchikan]. He said, "Obviously you're trying to raise the bar to what gets on the ballot. ... I guess what I'm getting at is I'd like to see rural Alaska be less disenfranchised in the initiative process because a lot of these things are wildlife initiatives that affect them very directly. And, I think it would be wonderful if they had to fly around in a super cub, land in a village and start going door to door, they'd probably get run out at that point - 'Do you want us to stop snaring wolves,' you know. But rural Alaska is disenfranchised in the process because in urban Alaska, they can sit out there in front of the population centers - the way it's written." REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAMS deferred to the Division of Elections. Number 0503 DANNA LATOUR, Administrative Officer, Division of Elections, Office of the Lieutenant Governor, explained the division's responsibility in this piece of legislation is essentially the same as they currently operate under. This bill would require, when they do their checking and verify signatures, that they would have to assure through their computer programming change that signatures have been verified, equal in the number of 15 percent of the people who voted in the last general election in 30, or three-quarters of the state's 40 election districts. MS. LATOUR explained there are 25 election districts, counting the Kenai Peninsula and the Mat-Susitna [Matanuska-Susitna] Borough, those would be our urban districts. She noted the Division of Elections feels this makes a change in their policy or the way they do their work. The $3,000 fiscal note represents the minor changes to their mainframe program that verifies those signatures. CHAIR JAMES remarked at least five of the rural districts will have to participate in order to get the initiative on the ballot and mentioned there are 25 in the urban areas. MS. LATOUR replied that's correct. CHAIR JAMES mentioned there are 15 and at least five would have to participate in it. She said she believes that's better than it currently is. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN agreed with the correction [three-quarter not two-thirds]. Currently it takes one signature from a district, you have to have 10 percent of the aggregate of everybody that voted, and at least one signature from two-thirds of the House district. CHAIR JAMES agreed that one signature from two-thirds of the House district isn't very many. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN added that it's not like a consensus in that particular House district. REPRESENTATIVE COGHILL asked if it would be more difficult to get petitions in the more sparse areas than it would be in the more densely populated districts. He remarked he didn't believe doing it electronically would work, that means we're going to have to go from village to village in some of the rather large districts, maybe the 15 percent becomes a hindrance for them. Number 0546 MS. LATOUR explained how an initiative petition is circulated and how they receive them. Typically the three prime sponsors on an initiative petition, and the initial 100 sponsors recruit additional sponsors for an initiative petition. She further stated, "This bill, I guess would place more onus on those sponsors to make sure that they have representation throughout the state so they may go search out someone who looks at their issue favorably, in a town like McGrath, and find a person in that community who would serve as a signature gatherer. So, it's going to take more work on the side of the prime sponsors and those people backing the issue." MS. LATOUR continued, "As far as getting the petition booklets back, our requirement is that those booklets be submitted to our office as one unit. So, it would take more time to gather those booklets from across the state as the one-year calendar, the clocks, you know continues to wind-down. Other than that, I don't know any other impact it would have other than the sponsors being responsible for finding people to circulate the petitions out there." REPRESENTATIVE COGHILL remarked that does answer his question, getting sponsors in each locality obviously is going to be very important. And, of course the empty petitions can be transmitted electronically and then the sponsor would have to be designated by whoever is driving that petition through. Number 0565 MS. LATOUR informed the committee members that each initiative petition booklet has to be sequentially numbered. She indicated that she didn't recall talking about the prospect of faxing an entire booklet. Ms. LaTour said, "We staple those booklets as we're going through the verification process, we don't really require that they come back to us stapled. But knowing that the booklet ... comes back to us in the same condition that it went out tells us that someone didn't take that book apart and spread those pages out through a number of locations. It's the responsibility of the petition gatherer to make sure that they're with that booklet to gather those signatures. And so for that reason, we've never considered electronically transmitting the booklets or having prime sponsors transmit those booklets in that fashion." REPRESENTATIVE HUDSON reiterated that he likes the idea of moving up to 15 percent in districts, and 30 as opposed the 27 for the very reasons that were spoken here. Now they can't just be done in the urban parts of the state. They'd have to go out to rural areas as well. He concluded that he believes that's really good when you're amending the constitution. Representative Hudson asked how difficult it would be to get 15 percent of the voters at any given time. CHAIR JAMES said 15 percent of those who voted in the preceding election - that's probably not very many even if there was a poor voter turnout. She said she believes 15 percent would be a reasonable number. CHAIR JAMES remarked, "To follow up on Representative Hudson's, I like the three-fourths only because of the numbers we've already calculated, that there are 25 urban areas, and so, if you want to get just to rural areas, that really isn't representative of the rural areas. At least you got five out of fifteen, that's a third of them, and so that's more fair I think to get - assuming that we have a piece of legislation that's proposed that might be detrimental to the people in the rural areas and that they would want to have a strong voice against it. It may well be that that's where the issue comes from - is that we are trying to do something for them and not against them but to have a standard responsibility." REPRESENTATIVE HUDSON asked Ms. LaTour to provide the committee an accounting of how many voted in each of the districts so that the committee could determine what 15 percent would be [provided in the packet]. He reiterated that currently some districts only have to have one. REPRESENTATIVE KERTTULA implied the petition process in Alaska was written to be an easy way for people to get things onto the ballot. She asked Ms. LaTour if she knew of the constitutional history behind that and why the drafters would have drafted it (indisc.) that. MS. LATOUR replied no. Number 0627 BETTY ROLLINS testified via teleconference from Fairbanks in opposition to HB 45. She said, "It's obvious that none of the people that are speaking there today have ever stood on a street corner or attempted to get an initiative on the books. If you're Mr. George Soros, with a billion bucks in your pocket, you probably can do it. Other than to thwart and deny the Alaskan's the right to the initiative process, I can see absolutely no reason for the change in this legislation." MS. ROLLINS referred to the Constitutional Convention, pages 1028, 1136 to 1142, and pages 1180 to 1183. She stated, "You'll find that they ... tried to make it 15 percent, some tried to make it 8 percent - the ones that did not want the citizens to have an initiative process tried to make it 15 percent. And, it was very evident ... that was the object. So, they finally did decide on 10 percent and the three-fourths. And, at the present time, I really believe if state employees, Division of Elections, and other people would seriously look at some of these petitions -- number one, the question was also asked how many of these petitions would have passed this past election if the 15 percent were in effect, none, absolutely none. And if you look back at what happened ... most, I think all but one had to go back the second time. They turn them in, and then if they don't have enough, they come back and get more signatures within a specific time period. And, there's only one that had an adequate number of signatures during this last go-around. So absolutely none of them would have made it, even under Sharp's bill of last year. And under this, 15 percent is a lot, a lot, a lot of people, let me tell you, I've stood on a street corner." MS. ROLLINS continued, "Now I find that the problem, and there's really nothing you can do about it as you say there's court cases that say you have to be able to pay sponsors. But in this last election, I was very interested because of the marijuana initiative. There were two people ... who gave an address of ... Lyman Lane in North Pole. I tried to get in touch with these people because I wanted to talk to them. These people don't exist in the state of Alaska. I have reported this to the Division of Elections. I reported to the Ombudsman. They have no driver's license, they've never applied for a permanent fund - any record that I could have checked, I have checked. And there's another individual, who in an eight-week period got almost 8,000 signatures. I've stood on a street corner, I asked if they could possibly check and find out if these signatures were valid, some way to check." MS. ROLLINS concluded, "I think, if we should sort of put our finger in the dyke and try to get rid of some of these leaks of our initiative process, maybe we wouldn't have the problems. People with money can get anything on an initiative - the marijuana initiative, the wolf snare, that was money from out-of-state. Matter in fact, the marijuana initiative was never written by an Alaskan. It was written by 'Americans' for Medical Rights' in California, ... it was funded by George Soros. These are the problems that we have in Alaska. And, because of their rights and the court cases, there's very little that can be done about some of these things. But at least we could check when we find problems with an initiative. People that don't exist, we could check and find out about them." Number 0685 CHAIR JAMES referred to Ms. Rollins comment that "None would have passed under this new rule." Chair James said she suspects they may have passed anyway, however, they would have a different configuration of signatures and that might have made it more difficult. As more and more people are moving into the Anchorage area, and many of the rural people are moving into the urban areas, we get a more disproportionate representation of the people in the sparsely populated areas. Anything we can do to be sure that their voice is heard is a positive step. CHAIR JAMES explained "mob rule" is when we make decisions by poles, petitions, or anywhere where the influence over the decision-making process is done without taking a vote, and without being sure that you have proper representation from all the districts. We have a district plan in our government to protect the people in every district to give them a voice. Alaska is probably more out of balance on those issues than any other state. She said, "As long as we have no surface transportation to many of the areas in our state, it's going to continue this way because as rural people get employment, they're going to have to come to town to be able to get their employment. So we want to be sure that we protect the entire state." CHAIR JAMES further stated, "We keep saying, 'Well all these other states do it this way,' I have that favorite saying, 'We don't care how they do it out there. We have to do it our way and we have to deal with our conditions and our 365 million acres of land in Alaska, with shortly over 600 thousand population. That's a different kind of configuration than any other state has to deal with. There's no one who has those kinds of proportions." Chair James asked what are the other committee assignments for HJR 7 and HB 45. Number 0721 KYLE JOHANSEN, Legislative Aid to Representative Williams, replied the next referrals are Judiciary and Finance Committees for HJR 7, and Finance for HB 45. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN mentioned he would provide minutes from the Constitutional Convention on referendums. CHAIR JAMES suggested, "It might be, Representative Ogan..." [End of tape]. TAPE 99-1, SIDE B Number 0001 CHAIR JAMES stated she is very supportive of the constitutional form of government because it sets the parameters. And, before the parameters are changed, you have to have good reasons. It's not necessarily easy to do that. She pointed out, "When we do things by popular demand, it does not necessarily always fall under the purview of our constitution. So, I think that's really an important thing to see what they were thinking at the time. However, I'm past understanding that they couldn't possibly have thought of everything. Most of the time, when your setting up parameters, there are some people who can figure out how to make it to their advantage. And what happens when too much - of people taking advantage of something - that they couldn't have seen when they wrote the constitution, or couldn't have thought of - then that's when we need to make an amendment." CHAIR JAMES summarized that we need to be sure that we follow the proper steps in making an amendment. To get an amendment out to the people to vote, 67 percent of the districts have to say yes we want that on the ballot. So, that's a real control for our constitutional amendment and we should not change our constitution easily. Number 0037 REPRESENTATIVE COGHILL called attention to the statistics included in the committee packet. He reported 38 percent of the districts passed the last five referendums. This is an average of 15 districts. This also indicates that the urban districts can have a tremendous amount of clout. REPRESENTATIVE COGHILL reiterated that he supports this initiative because they're going to have to go through the standing rules to get this. He also mentioned he is concerned about the logistics of getting petitions out through rural areas and that it hasn't been answered to his satisfaction. He concluded that he supports this initiative simply because it makes the vast majority of our districts accountable to have changed our constitution. REPRESENTATIVE HUDSON stated we are trying to strike a balance to make sure everybody is equally represented. He declared his concern is in the 15 percent of each of the districts and would feel somewhat more comfortable if that were 10 percent because it would still require some effort and initiative. And, of course, it would require that they go out to at least three more districts - which isn't currently required. REPRESENTATIVE HUDSON said he believes the one vote in any one district is wrong. He mentioned he would like to have more time to consider this legislation. CHAIR JAMES explained she understands the current reading is you have to have an accumulation of 10 percent of the voters that voted in the last election, and they have to be from at least two-thirds of the House districts, one in a House district is enough. Isn't that correct? REPRESENTATIVE HUDSON replied it's currently 15 percent in each one of the 30. CHAIR JAMES further remarked, "You're talking about - under this - but under the old way, they could get one and that's not enough. That's not enough particularly when almost every decision that we have made ... in the legislature, and every initiative that is passed, has a different effect on the urban areas than it does on the rural areas." Chair James said she doesn't know if 15 percent or 10 percent is too many, but one is not enough. She said she believes they need to have some kind of a challenge to be sure that -- even 10 percent isn't a popular vote in that district. A small number of people could put an initiative on the ballot that was totally averse to the area. Number 0149 REPRESENTATIVE SMALLEY explained his understanding of an initiative and a referendum petition is to make readily available the public's ability to bring about change in government. And, we're talking about representative government in the House and the Senate by representation by the majority. He said these changes actually redefine majority. It's not necessarily the majority of the population, it's the majority of the districts represented within the state. REPRESENTATIVE SMALLEY noted his concern is that we're changing the definition of representative government. He said, "Is it up to change - to strike the balance as you suggested because we're changing the stripe." CHAIR JAMES said that she understood Representative Smalley's concern. She further stated, "It's true that we are changing the stripes of this and that 51 percent then, instead of the two-thirds in the existing bill if (indisc.) now - then 51 percent of the districts could make the decision to put this on the ballot. However, that was only one vote out of many of districts. So, I think that, if we're going to stand by your definition of the majority which is in cases of legislation, 51 percent - then that would mean that in order to get it on the ballot we'd need 51 percent of the people in at least 51 percent of the districts - and if we were going to get a true majority view. And so, I don't think that in the initiative process that it's intended to be strictly with the representative form of government, but certainly we have to protect the minority. That's the whole issue of parliamentary law is that the majority rules, but the minority's heard. In this particular case the minority is not heard, so I think we need to make some changes. I don't know what the changes need to be but I think we need to expand that." REPRESENTATIVE SMALLEY explained it wasn't his point to change the 51 percent. Changing it to three-quarters is the problem that he is having. CHAIR JAMES agreed. She said the only time she was convinced that the three-quarters was necessary was when she received the numbers that 25 percent of the districts could qualify as urban and only 15 percent in the rural area. She further stated, "If you even stay with two-thirds, it's only a couple of them. And that's too small a percentage of the rural area to satisfy me. We have to have a bigger representation I think, otherwise, they're run over with a truck." Number 0221 REPRESENTATIVE KERTTULA said she would like to know why the drafters actually made it so broad because this does change the constitution. Secondly, no matter what happens, everyone has the right to vote and has less of a concern because this is a route by which individuals can get things on the ballot where the whole state gets to vote. She stated, "If we are concerned about impacting rural Alaska, I too am concerned about the 15 percent because I think that in some of the rural districts that's going to be extremely hard to get. And that in a weird way it kind of turns around the problem and may make it more difficult for those people to have a voice." CHAIR JAMES announced she is willing to hold the bill for further consideration. Number 0275 REPRESENTATIVE HUDSON offered Amendment 1, page 1, line 11 of HJR 7, remove 15 and replace it with 10 percent. That there be at least 10 percent in each House district. to at least ten percent of those who voted in the preceding general election in the house district. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN objected. He said, "If we lower it to 10 percent, then I would like to see it all the House districts in the state. And there's precedence for that, and I have, in a committee packet on another bill, a breakdown of different states and what they have done. ... I guess I might move that as a friendly amendment to the amendment if the mover of the first amendment doesn't object and I'd certainly like to have the bill sponsor weigh in on that. I could tell you that would get my vote on this bill." CHAIR JAMES stated that amendment is too complicated, that they should handle that in a separate amendment. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN maintained his objection. He suggested the bill should not be amended at this meeting, possibly at the next meeting. Number 0362 CHAIR JAMES asked for a roll call vote on Amendment 1. Representative Hudson, Smalley, Coghill, Kerttula and James voted in favor of the amendment. Representative Ogan and Whitaker voted against the amendment. Amendment 1 of HJR 7 passed by a vote of 5 to 2. REPRESENTATIVE OGAN asked for a point of clarification. He asked, "Did we amend the House Joint Resolution." CHAIR JAMES confirmed that the amendment was made to HJR 7. She pointed out the committee also addressed HB 45. CHAIR JAMES suggested assigning HJR 7 and HB 45 to a work session; creating a CS and then bring that to the committee.
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