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April 13, 2007
Positive Changes Proposed for Initiative Process
House Bill 2082, which reforms Oregon's initiative process, is headed out of committee and ready for some serious debate by the Legislature and the public. If it is passed and signed by the Governor, it will certainly make it difficult for initiative campaigns utilizing paid petitioners to conduct business as usual, but having read the entire bill through and pondered a bit on it, I can only come up with one complaint and a lot of praise.
Let me say right up front that I don't know how Tim Trickey runs his petitioning business because he stepped into the scene after I had stepped out of it, but I do know a few things about how paid petitioning was done in the recent past (at least until Oregon voters ended payment by the signature). Petitioners could show up from out of state and hit the streets the same day with a fist full of petitions, knowing nothing about Oregon or the issues they were circulating. Their relationship with the Chief Petitioner could be very informal. Treated as independent contractors, they bore sole responsibility for paying taxes and they received no benefits. If they didn't pay their taxes, nobody followed up on it because nobody knew who they really were, where they really lived, or how many hours they really worked. If John Doe was being paid $1.50 for every signature and he could find ten other people willing to collect signatures for $1.00 each and give him their sheets to sign, he could do it and no one would be the wiser. If he just got out of prison for identity theft, nobody could stop him from gathering the signatures and addresses of thousands of Oregonians. Chief Petitioners could pay cash out as they saw fit with little, if any, record-keeping, make up out of whole cloth whatever they wanted to report to the Secretary of State, and nobody ever checked to see whether they were reporting factual information. Measure 36 put an end to some of the abuses, but not all. HB 2082 will really clamp down on the problem.
If the bill passes as written, paid petitioners will have to complete a training program and register with the Secretary of State before they will be allowed to collect a single paid signature. Registration will include providing a street address, list of petitions the individual will be circulating, photograph of the petitioner, sample signature of the petitioner, and criminal background information (those convicted for fraud, forgery or identity theft will not be allowed to collect paid signatures).
The one point on which I strongly disagree with this bill is that registration will also require submission of a statement, signed by a chief petitioner of each petition that individual will circulate, acknowledging that the chief petitioner is liable for violations of law or rule committed by the person collecting the signatures. I just don't see how that is fair unless it can be shown that the chief petitioner allowed or encouraged that behavior.
In any case, the petitioner will then receive some sort of identification showing that he or she is registered. That identification will include a photograph of the petitioner and must be carried whenever the person is gathering signatures. If the person collects signatures when they are not registered, all their signatures will be thrown out. And when it comes time to turn signatures in to the Secretary of State's office, the signatures will be sorted by petitioner, rather than by county.
These changes will make it much more difficult for initiative campaigns to attract the out-of-state petitioners because those individuals tend to want every day to count and will not be very willing to come to Oregon if they must spend several days passing a training course and obtaining registration identification before being allowed to begin work. They are already threatening not to work in Oregon because of the hourly pay requirement, as opposed to per-signature payment. Somehow I don't believe they will be missed all that much by most of us.
All around it seems the bill is making changes aimed directly at encouraging volunteer signature gathering. For example, signature sheets for volunteers will now be a different color from sheets circulated by paid petitioners. People signing a petition will be able to discern immediately whether the circulator is a volunteer. And sheets will now be available on the Internet for downloading and signing by anyone who supports the measure. A person won't have to go looking for someone carrying the petition. If they want to sign it, they can print it out themselves, sign it, and mail it in to the Chief Petitioner. This will be a great tool for legitimate grassroots groups. I can see the potential for someone to collect sufficient signatures without ever stepping foot on the street with a clipboard.
Of course, if the Chief Petitioner is actually just someone who has lent his or her name to the effort so as to obfuscate whose initiative it really is, that person will have to be willing to receive a heck of a lot of these individually signed petitions in the mail at his or her home.
The most sweeping change to the initiative process that this bill proposes is the record-keeping that will be required and the review of those records. Here are some changes that are long overdue. Detailed records will have to be kept pertaining to all contractors and subcontractors, employment or training manuals, payroll records that include hours worked, number of signatures collected and amounts paid (I would have given my left arm for such records when I was trying to do Sizemore's reports), payments made by the chief petitioner or contractor, and copies of all paid signature sheets. The records must be kept current to within 7 days at all times and be reviewed regularly by the Secretary of State. The Attorney General and Bureau of Labor and Industries may also inspect the records. All these records must also be kept for two years after the deadline for filing the signatures or the date the last statement of contributions and expenditures for the drive has been filed. If the records are not made available for inspection and review as required, then no more signatures may be collected on the initiative until they are made available.
The bill also increases the number of signatures needed to file a measure from 25 to 1,000. I think that is a fair compromise – any more would be problematic in the case that the Attorney General's office plays politics with a ballot title, thereby forcing a re-write (this does happen, heartfelt assertions to the contrary notwithstanding). This provision will prevent some of the whimsical filings by certain prolific writers (we all know who) who don't actually intend to pursue all those ideas, unless they happen to get a surprisingly uncontested and awesome ballot title, as occurred with what became Measure 7 back in 2000.
Another change would be to allow minor, unsubstantial changes to the wording of the measure without having to re-collect the 1000 signatures, so long as the deadline for written comments has not passed. This will allow for things like spelling, punctuation, and grammar changes, fixing legalese, or whatever other minor changes the Attorney General agrees will not "substantially change the substance of the measure." I'm a bit concerned about the level of discretion there, but not being an attorney I can't say whether it's legally permissible or not.
Finally, the wording of the affidavit on the petition has been changed so that the circulator signs a statement that he or she actually witnessed the signing of the petition, rather than that the petition was merely signed in his or her presence. This will prevent some of the carelessness that has occurred in the past with signature sheets being left out on counters or tables to be signed.
If the Legislature will dump the liability of the Chief Petitioner for whatever a signature gatherer does while out gathering signatures, then I can give my full support to this bill. I think it will make a very big difference in the process, making it far more difficult to continue with the sort of unscrupulous petitioning practices by some in the business while avoiding killing the process for everyone else. I'm pleasantly surprised by it and congratulate the committee for coming up with some substantive changes that will really make a positive difference.
Posted by Becky at April 13, 2007 04:18 PM
