Court Asked To Withdraw Nuke Initiative Legislation Could Void Batt’s Deal With Feds
Eleven mainly eastern Idaho interests asked the state Supreme Court on Thursday to remove from the November ballot the initiative aimed at voiding Gov. Phil Batt’s nuclear waste agreement with the federal government.
The Coalition for Ballot Integrity - representing 10 companies and organizations, including some of the state’s biggest employers - and the Eastern Idaho Economic Development Council contend the attempt to void the deal is an illegal use of the initiative process and improperly usurps the constitutional power of the governor to make contracts.
“This proposition is unique in Idaho history,” former Supreme Court Justice Robert Huntley said. “It asks Idaho voters to nullify a legal contract and trample on constitutional authority simply because some perceive the subject of the contract to be unpopular.”
Huntley and Idaho Falls attorney Tim Hopkins said to let the initiative come to a vote would only be a waste of money because it is patently unconstitutional and will be struck down one way or the other.
But former state senator John Peavey, spokesman for the initiative-sponsoring group Stop the Shipments, called the move “the most heavy-handed example of dirty politics that’s been seen in this state in a long time.” And he predicted the Supreme Court would quickly reject it.
Neither Batt nor Attorney General Alan Lance, who also signed the waste agreement, endorsed the move to keep the initiative off the ballot. But Peavey said that was only because they were terrified of a voter backlash.
Stop the Shipments secured thousands more than the 41,335 registered voter signatures required to put the issue on the Nov. 5 ballot. The group claims Batt’s deal is so riddled with loopholes that it will never be enforced and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory will become the nation’s de facto nuclear waste dump.
Under the Oct. 16 agreement, Batt traded dumping 1,133 more waste shipments at the INEL over the next 40 years for a court-enforced timetable for cleanup and removal of most waste by 2035.
The governor, who is making defense of the deal one of his priorities in speeches around the state, maintains that it is enforceable and without it even more waste will be dumped at the INEL with no guarantee of cleanup or removal. And while agreeing on Thursday that the Stop the Shipments initiative has serious constitutional flaws, Batt stopped short of endorsing the legal challenge.
“I have no quarrel with the motives of those who are bringing this action,” he said. “I agree that the public is being misled by promoters of the so-called ‘Stop the Shipments’ initiative, but for more reasons than are contained in this lawsuit.”
Batt said he was confident voters will reject the initiative if it remains on the ballot. Lance agreed, citing constitutional problems found during a review of the Stop the Shipments measure. But unlike Batt, the attorney general flatly opposed Thursday’s legal action.
Democratic U.S. Senate challenger Walt Minnick, who has made his opposition to Batt’s agreement a focus of his campaign against Republican Sen. Larry Craig, called Thursday’s move an effort to thwart the will of the people.
“The very same forces that brought nuclear waste into Idaho and stored it on top of our drinking water are at work again,” Minnick said. “And now they’re using heavy-handed legal maneuvers to prevent the people of our state from having any say about nuclear waste at all.”