INITIATIVES A SIGN OF LEGISLATURE'S, CITIZENS' DISTRUST

Forget the Legislature.

The people of Arizona are taking government into their own hands. A dozen
initiatives and referendums are making their way toward the Nov. 7 ballot.

Voters may decide on proposals to limit growth and taxes, legalize drugs,
deregulate telephone service and spend billions in tobacco-settlement money.

Weighty issues.

Are the voters smart enough to resolve them effectively? Or will they bungle
budgets and monkey-wrench Arizona into California-style chaos?

Pundits such as Washington Post columnist David Broder say California has
been tarnished by a decline in education, police protection, libraries and
other services. It started with a 1978 property tax revolt of the people.

Critics say Proposition 13 spawned an "initiative industrial complex" where
campaign professionals combine cash and media savvy to cram every ballot
with proposals that hogtie government from the capital to the farthest fire
district in the forest.

And if they're doing it in California, can Arizona be far behind? The Grand
Canyon State already has seen what a few people with big money can do with a
catchy issue, like legalizing marijuana for people suffering from cancer.

"The harm is that one person can change the law in Arizona," said Bruce
Merrill, Arizona State University political science professor and pollster.
"Does John Sperling speak for the people of Arizona?"

Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix, pooled more than $1 million
with international financier George Soros and Cleveland businessman Peter
Lewis to declare war on the war on drugs in 1996.

It's become a war on government, as well. Major medical marijuana
initiatives were approved for Arizona in each of the past two general
elections, and another one is headed for the Nov. 7 ballot - all of them
opposed by law enforcement officials and most state leaders.

Sperling, Soros and Lewis have kicked in $200,000 apiece, said Sam Vagenas,
spokesman for the Drug Medicalization, Prevention and Control Act of 2000. A
good chunk of the money goes toward paying people who circulate petitions;
the circulators command up to $1.50 for each of the 101,762 required
signatures on petition drives to place an initiative on the ballot.

"We're almost there," Vagenas said. "It'll qualify for the 2000 ballot."

The latest proposal would parole everyone in Arizona serving prison
sentences for simple drug possession. It also orders Attorney General Janet
Napolitano to distribute marijuana to anyone with a doctor's excuse.

"This is a law office," Napolitano said. "It's a prosecution office. It is
not a pharmacy."

Police and prosecutors have hired a consultant to campaign against the
initiative.

They have little other choice. After law enforcement lobbyists gutted the
first medical marijuana initiative at the Legislature in 1997, supporters
rallied.

"The People Have Spoken" was the name of a referendum group in 1998 that
rebuked lawmakers and restored most of the drug-legalization initiative.

And in what many interpret as a "Power to the People" message, Arizonans
also passed the Voter Protection Act, requiring a three-quarters majority
vote of the Legislature to change or kill any popular initiative.

This year, the Legislature struck back at the electorate. By a single vote
in the House and Senate, lawmakers posted a referendum that would limit the
people's initiative power under the state Constitution.

Backed by hunters and hated by animal lovers, the referendum asks voters to
decide whether a two-thirds supermajority should be required to pass
initiatives on contest hunts and other wildlife-management issues.

"This proposal sets a terrible precedent which empowers a minority of voters
to block the will of a majority," said Sen. Chris Cummiskey, D-central
Phoenix.

The majority is capable of abusing the power of initiatives as well. High on
TV commercials bought by anonymous millionaires, the majority can stampede
past the Legislature to the ballot box, trampling the constitutional rights
of the minority.

In his book, Democracy Derailed, Broder calls initiatives "a weakening of
our republican form of government."

But the Arizona Legislature is already paralyzed by partisan infighting,
arrogance and intrigue, according to Dennis Burke, director of the state
chapter of Common Cause.

Burke admitted that initiatives may not be the best way to handle some
issues, such as tax and revenue allocation. But lawmakers struggled 100 days
this spring and barely began the job of parceling the state's $3 billion
tobacco settlement.

"There is no honest deliberative process at the Legislature," Burke said.
"They'll listen to the lobbyists. They'll listen to themselves. They'll
laugh at the public and go home."

Rep. Jerry Overton, R-Litchfield Park, knows that feeling. He is sponsoring
an initiative to require voter approval of virtually all tax increases,
after he introduced unsuccessful bills year after year.

"There is a problem with the initiative system," Overton acknowledged. "If
you can raise $200,000, you can get 200,000 signatures. After you get it on
the ballot, if you've got enough money and can convince the newspapers, you
can get it passed. That's wrong.

"But it's also wrong for something as big as my initiative is, it's wrong
that the Legislature doesn't allow it."

Environmentalists say they launched the Citizens Growth Management
Initiative because they couldn't get governors or lawmakers to see that
growth is part of a serious air pollution problem in the Valley.

"We couldn't get the political leaders, except at the local level, to
realize that it all related to land use," campaign spokeswoman Renee
Guillory said. "Not even a study committee could get through the
Legislature."

So it goes. The people don't trust government to represent them. The
government doesn't trust the people with initiatives. This thread of
distrust twists through the proposals that will crowd the Nov. 7 ballot.

But by the end of Election Day, Burke trusts Arizona voters to tie it all
together. His group is pushing a ballot proposal for a citizens commission
to replace the Legislature as the agency that will redraw legislative and
congressional districts after the 2000 census.

"It's rare that a bad initiative gets passed," Burke said. "When something
goofy gets on the ballot, it gets an awful lot of attention. I don't worry .
. . the way some people worry about it."