« Tony Snow, mindless drone | Main | Are You Ready for the Rapture? »

July 25, 2006

My Take on the Latest Initiative News

Today's news is full of commentary and reports stemming from the latest turn-in of contribution and expenditure reports for Oregon's latest pack of initiatives. I thought it might be fun to go through some of them and comment.

First, let's start with Bill Sizemore's editorial in today's Oregonian. Guess what. I agree with him and have for some time. I never thought Measure 26, which requires payment by the hour rather than payment by the signature, would do anything to clean up the initiative process. The reason is very simple: enforcement. There isn't any.

The next big story is that Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury says petitioners have been sloppy. I must say, I laughed right out loud when I saw that. I've seen many a petition sheet with cigarette burns, dirty footprints, tears, or food smears marring its pretty face. Some petitioners are, indeed, sloppy. But that is not the sort of sloppiness to which Bradbury is referring. The problem is failure to follow the rules.

I have a very hard time seeing what is unfair about the rules. Chief Petitioners must turn in their own petition sheets, the sheets must be properly filled out, they must be organized by county, and they must be numbered. You can't do like they did in Missouri and throw a box of mixed up, unnumbered petitions at the Secretary of State's office and expect them to be accepted. And you can't do like Oregon's term limits backers did and expect the Secretary of State to accept 1800 petition sheets on your behalf when they were turned in mixed up with TABOR petition sheets turned in by someone else.

Naturally, Ted Berthelote, chief petitioner of the term limits initiative, denies that occurred. He said, "I believe I turned them in personally and signed for all of the sheets." Yeah. Okay.

I've certainly had my disagreements with the Secretary of State's office – and the Attorney General's office, for that matter – over various things related to the initiative process. But I simply do not believe that the people who work in that office cheat, break the rules, or behave in an unprofessional manner. I've never once seen that. And even when I was working for Bill Sizemore and I knew they all hated what we were doing, never once were they anything but courteous and helpful. So I'm sorry, but I just do not believe Berthelote.

Edward Walsh and Dave Hogan have also weighed in today on the latest reports. Their primary message is that the TABOR and term limits measures were funded by Howard Rich. But if you've been reading PK faithfully (as you ought to!), you already know that.

So I'll move on to what surprised me. And that was the amount the campaigns have spent this year to make the ballot. Wow. TABOR backers spent $671,705 to make the ballot. And term limits backers spent $510,000. Contrast that to 2000, the last time I was involved in a drive, and we could make the ballot for $100,000 or less.

Interestingly, Bradbury's campaign finance effort, which followed the law about paying by the hour rather than by the signature, spent only $387,071. That's still a heck of a lot of money.

But here is where it gets interesting to me. Bill Sizemore claims he spent $196,601 to qualify his tax cut measure and just $111,150 for his insurance measure. How can that be? His measures were carried by the same petitioners who carried the term limits and TABOR measures. I'm not the only one who has questions about Sizemore's amazingly self-managed campaign. Does the difference in cost reflect unreported in-kind contributions of management services by the other campaigns that shared Arno? Or did Sizemore once again find a way to funnel money into the campaign without reporting it, as he did when he sold Robert Randall phony stocks in his petitioning company? Inquiring minds want to know.

Finally, the yapping lap dog Ted Piccolo weighs in at NW Republican claiming the Oregon Secretary of State has kicked off a "PR offensive to try to save face" for having disenfranchised 15,000 citizens by tossing their signatures because incompetent chief petitioners turned their petition sheets in all mixed together. He then asks, "Why is it that Oregon has some of the lowest validity rates in the nation? Why is it that Oregon is one of the costliest states to circulate a petition in the nation?"

Hmm. I don't doubt Oregon's validation process is stricter than other states. But this problem is compounded by the fact that the petitioning companies being used are not exactly what you would call "ethical". A bit of time spent looking through the archives at Our Oregon will bring doubters up to date on this problem.

Posted by Becky at July 25, 2006 11:12 AM