High court upholds initiative process integrity

Billings Gazette Opinion:
November 2, 2006

When most ballots were printed for Montana's Nov. 7 elections, there were six statewide issues listed. Three have been invalidated.

Last week, after months of controversy and litigation, the Montana Supreme Court unanimously ruled on two cases that three initiatives failed to meet the requirements of state law to be placed before voters.

The Supreme Court wrote the final chapters in what had been a sorry saga of how the people's initiative process was perverted by out-of-state money, paid out-of-state signature-gatherers and deceptive signature-gathering practices. In its unanimous rulings, the state's high court took a stand for preserving the integrity of the initiative process.

Unanimous decision
On Thursday, the high court affirmed a Great Falls District Court judge's earlier ruling that invalidated Constitutional Initiative 97 (a formula to limit state spending), Constitutional Initiative 98 (to allow recall of judges for any reason) and Initiative 154 (involving eminent domain and land-use rules).

Opponents of the three initiatives, which were promoted by Montanans in Action, a corporation that listed its purpose as education and its executive director as Trevis Butcher of Winifred.

Montanans in Action has not revealed its funding sources, although Butcher testified in court that most of its money came from donors outside of Montana. Montanans in Action was the major donor for political committees promoting each of the three ballot measures.

On Friday, the seven Supreme Court justices dismissed another appeal, which involved CI-97 only. A Helena District Court judge previously invalidated that initiative on the grounds that it would make multiple changes in the Montana Constitution in violation of the that same document, which says one initiative can address only one change. Having invalidated CI-97 a day earlier, the court said the second appeal was moot.

Multiple violations of law
Writing for the court in the signature-gathering case, Justice Patricia Cotter painstakingly reviewed the issues in a 38-page opinion. She noted that the 2003 Montana Legislature had revised the statute on initiative signature-gathering to narrow the definition of who can legally sign the affidavit as one who gathers or assists in gathering signatures.

On the matter of giving a legally required address, Cotter wrote that the address signature-gatherers listed must be a place where the signature-gatherer can be reached during the initiative certification process.

And Cotter said that substantial evidence was presented to the District Court that the "bait and switch" tactics that signature-gatherers used in getting people to sign more than one initiative petition were a pervasive pattern of fraud.

A key element in Cotter's opinion on each of these three points was that the initiative proponents failed to offer evidence refuting the opponents' claims.

As Cotter said, "if the initiative process is to remain viable and retain its integrity, those invoking it must comply with the laws passed by our Legislature. We can neither excuse nor overlook violations of these laws, for to do so here would confer free reign for others to do so in other matters. We must enforce the law as written and as the Legislature intended."

The high court ordered that votes on the invalid initiatives not be counted. Thus ends one story of how hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by unidentified, out-of-state entities to influence laws that would have drastically affected Montanans' lives.

The three initiatives would have superseded the budget decisions of elected legislators, threatened the independence of the judiciary and negated community planning and zoning efforts. Good riddance to this ill-conceived trio.