Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Salt Lake Tribune: Initiative Groups Taking Their Signature Drive(s) Online

Sign the petitions, folks... Let's not be hoodwinked by our legislature this go-round

Encouraging Cathy McKitrick story in this morning's Salt Lake Tribune, reporting that sponsors of the various citizen initiatives which are percolating through the State of Utah are embracing applicable provisions of Utah law, which permit use of electronic signatures for online "transactions, " and are putting their their government reform petitions online. According to this morning's story, the following two petitions are already uploaded and ready for your signatures:
Fair Boundaries Redistricting Initiative
Peoples Right Anti-bribery & Anticorruption Initiatives
This morning's story also reports that the folks from the Utahns For Ethical Government (UEG) are not far behind, and that they'll have their own broad ethics reform petition ready for your online signatures imminently:
UEG Ethics Reform Initiative
We'll of course keep a close eye on developments, and let you know as soon as the latter petition is up and running online.

We applaud these citizen activist groups for entering the electronic age, and making these online resources available to the broad range of citizens who regularly use the internet. In that connection, we urge our readers to navigate to the above two sites, to affix your signatures.

As we've already reported, Utah legislative leadership is working in the back rooms on Capitol Hill to put together their own "ethics reform package(s)." Whether this will result in a genuine attempt to enact robust ethics reform, or result in a mere "an empty vessel" we do not know. One thing we do know however... legislative leadership will be a lot more inclined to treat ethics reform seriously this year... if there are several certifiable petitions ready for the ballot this coming November. We accordingly urge our readers to keep our Utah legislature's feet to the fire on this, by signing the various online citizen petitions. According to the most recent polling, the vast majority of Utahns continue to strongly favor broad state government ethics and campaign reform. Sign the petitions, folks. Let's not be hoodwinked by our legislature this go-round.

For the benefit of our WCF readers we'll also note that we've placed a new module, "Active Citizen Petitions," (which includes the three above-mentioned petitions) at the top of our right sidebar. And in the interest of making all active citizen petitions easily available to our readers, we've also added these other active citizen petitions within this new module:
Powder Mountain Disincorporation Petition
Ogden Streetcar Petition
Have at it, O Gentle Ones!

5 comments:

Bob Becker said...

If it's possible anyone still has doubts about the need for ethics reform in Utah, particularly respecting lobbyists and legislators, a quick gander at the two pictures in this SLTrib story this morning should end those doubts. Link here.

ozboy said...

I hope that the petition organizers continue to get actual signatures on actual petitions until this situation is resolved. If the focus is on electronic signatures and they gather the bulk that way it could result in the failure of said petitions if the electronic game gets disqualified by the guys and gals in black robes. You know the gangsters that control the legislature are going to pull out all stops to get the electronic signature gathering declared illegal.

Independent thinker said...

Read all 21 pages of the petition specifics. It is not written correctly and makes lawyers with tenure in perpetuity and impossible to replace and has other negatives.

It is apparent it was written by a lawyer for lawyers.

Be very careful what you sign up too and wish for.

We all want "Healthcare Reforms", just not the insanity put together by the liberals behind closed doors.

And we all want ethics reforms in Utah. But perhaps NOT the particular ethics reform written by lawyers for lawyers.

Just say'in.

Read the 21 pages very carefully...Curm, Oz, Dan, Rudi, then decide.

ozboy said...

Independent thinker

you wrote:

"It is not written correctly and makes lawyers with tenure in perpetuity and impossible to replace"

Please translate what you mean here, and also it would help if you tell us exactly what you think is not written correctly.

I have read all the petition (ethics reform) and in my opinion it would be a vast improvement over what we have now, which is practically nothing as far as obstacles to unethical behavior on the part of legislators.

What do you suggest is the way to approach this problem, assuming you think there is a problem?

Curmudgeon said...

Comment promoted to front page

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