Stealth legislation shortens time for circulating referendum petitions by six weeks
By Curmudgeon
Well, this one flew under the radar. Charlie Trentelman reports today in the Standard-Examiner in his Wasatch Rambler column that on Friday, the legislature passed Senate Bill 54, which shortens "by six weeks the time people challenging a law have to file petitions demanding a vote." Meaning a referendum, such as the one that overturned the legislature's school voucher law. "By god," the legislators seem to have decided, "we can't have the peasants getting uppity like this and telling us that we can't do to them what we want to do to them. Imagine, overturning our school voucher law by referendum. Just who the hell do the people think they are?"
Trentelman's full column, which deals with other related matters as well, can be found here.
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2 comments:
Trentelman's article talks about Marshall Thompson's film. It is actually this Saturday at 4:30 (not Friday as in the article) at Weber State University. You can check out http://www.foursitefilmfest.com/
for the details.
This bill made me angry because Senator Bramble dodged a question I asked him about this at a town meeting. I blogged about it on Feb. 18th. They're being sneaky here: the made the rules harder for state, county, and local initiatives, but only county and local referendums. They specifically left state referendums out of SB 54 to try and avoid public notice so soon after Referendum 1.
The bill language and intent talks about making everything "uniform"...as in "uniformly more difficult." They'll just wait a year or two until everyone has forgotten this little bill, and then tighten up the state referendum deadlines in the name of "uniformity."
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