
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 12, 1994                   TAG: 9402150266
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

UNWANTED IMPORT

IN HIS maiden State of the Commonwealth speech last month, Gov. George Allen said he wanted to bring the initiative and referendum to Virginia. The proposal struck one member of the House of Delegates as "kind of a weird, California idea."

Not quite. California isn't the only state, and wasn't the first, to embrace the initiative and referendum. But the sentiment was sound: This is one import Virginia can do without.

Voters here are accustomed to referendums. Voters are often asked to pass direct judgment on questions of the day: amendments to the state constitution, bond issues, liquor by the drink, elected school boards, local-government reorganization.

The initiative part would be new. Under it, petitioners, bypassing legislatures and governors or councils and mayors, propose new laws and get them on the ballot for approval or rejection.

In some systems, a referendum-approved measure is subject to legislative amendment or veto, which rather defeats the purpose. In the procedure's genuine form, initiative-and-referendum results are binding.

What's wrong with it? Plenty:

As up-or-down propositions, not subject to normal legislative scrutiny and perfecting amendment, laws passed under the initiative and referendum tend to be poorly drafted. Some are patently unconstitutional, leading to costly litigation that shouldn't have to be necessary.

Lacking the clearinghouse function usually performed by legislatures and governors, the procedure invites passage of conflicting measures in the same election. The result, again, is costly litigation and, in effect, lawmaking by the courts.

Fashioned solely by advocates, without the customary legislative compromise with opponents and less zealous proponents, laws enacted under the initiative and referendum tend to exacerbate rather than ease divisiveness between majority and minority viewpoints.

Without specific officeholders to be held accountable for the consequences if initiatives are approved, those consequences tend to go unconsidered. Instead, each question is treated in isolation as if, say, limits on one kind of tax would have no impact on other kinds of taxes.

When dozens of initiatives are on the ballot, as happens in states like California, the advantage goes to moneyed interests with the wherewithal to promote their preferred legislation above the general noise and clutter.

by CNB