Initiative Bill Unfair To Many, Stoicheff Says

Rep. Jim Stoicheff says a bill that would make it harder to put an initiative on Idaho’s ballot is clearly unconstitutional.

“It’s silencing the voice of the people, in my opinion,” he said Monday. “It looks to me like this was brought forth by people that are afraid of losing to a majority.”

Stoicheff, who is seeking an attorney general’s opinion, said the problem is that the bill puts a limit on how many signatures can be collected in any one county. It also requires at least a certain number of signatures from every county.

So if people from a county that’s over its limit sign petitions for an initiative, their names are thrown out. “It disenfranchises them,” said Stoicheff, D-Sandpoint.

That leaves tens of thousands of voters in Idaho’s highest-population counties without the ability to petition for an intiative, he said.

The bill, by Rep. Milt Erhart, R-Boise, would require initiative supporters to gather signatures in each of Idaho’s 44 counties. Plus, it sets minimum and maximum numbers of signatures for each county.

Proponents said rural areas of the state want to avoid being dominated by high-population urban areas. They pointed to 1994’s successful term limits initiative, for which about a third of the signatures were collected in Idaho’s biggest population center, Ada and Canyon counties.

But Ron Rankin, president of the Idaho State Property Owners Association and proponent of a tax-limiting initiative, said a third of Idaho’s voters live in those two counties. “So what’s the big deal about a third of the signatures coming from there?”

And Stoicheff said of the term-limits measure, “So what? The people approved it.”

Stoicheff tried to get the bill killed in committee Friday, but failed on a 10-7 vote.

Among those speaking in favor of the bill Friday were Greg Nelson, a lobbyist for the Idaho Farm Bureau. “What we’re concerned about is that statewide initiatives should go statewide,” Nelson told the committee. “If it’s going to cover every county, then they should go to every county to get signatures.”

The bill is awaiting technical corrections in the House. Stoicheff said he won’t try to quash it before it comes up for a vote, although he’ll pursue the question of its constitutionality.

“If I didn’t have the votes to kill it in committee, let it come up on the floor. Let ‘em all be recorded as voting on it, if they like that bill so much.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Betsy Z. Russell Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.