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Editorial: Courts right to OK initiatives, examine flaws later

Sat., Aug. 15, 2015

With legislators finally home and the governor on the road, Washington’s third branch of government took command this week. Supporters of the state’s initiative process did well.

Thursday, Spokane County Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza rejected Spokane Mayor David Condon’s attempt to block voting on a Worker Bill of Rights. The King County Superior Court did the same Friday by refusing to enjoin placement on the November ballot of Initiative 1366, another Tim Eyman effort to tie the hands of state lawmakers.

The state Supreme Court also acted. We will discuss its latest ruling in the McCleary education funding case in Sunday’s paper.

The Superior courts made quick work of the initiative litigation because state and local election officials are seeking a resolution by Sept. 3, when they have to know whether to include the proposals on the November ballot. Appeals could push the legal process out past that deadline. The city of Spokane and Envision Spokane are still litigating a 2013 case.

We don’t think much of either the local or state initiatives, but putting both to a vote may be the best way to resolve constitutional questions for Washingtonians who strongly support the initiative process, and do not always understand why the courts negate election results.

That could well be the outcome if the Worker Bill of Rights appears on the ballot. A city hearing examiner found that a provision subordinating the rights of businesses to those of individuals “legally flawed,” an assessment Cozza did not disagree with. A 2013 measure trod on constitutional rights even more obnoxiously.

Unfortunately, the constitutional questions get lost in the feel-good provisions: a potential sales tax break in the case of I-1366, interfering with employer preogatives to dismiss workers in the “rights” ordinance.

Unlike the Spokane cases, the issues raised by the Eyman measure are more nuanced and deserve extensive review not possible in just a few weeks. The King County judge expressed concern about the constitutionality of I-1366’s objective: supermajority votes for tax increases, or the sales tax cut for failing to do so.

At least nobody would lose their rights to free speech, or to petition the government for redress of grievances.

As Secretary of State Kim Wyman noted in defending the challenge to I-1366, the Supreme Court has removed only one initiative from the ballot. That 1996 initiative was aimed at amending federal law.

Initiatives that would specifically take constitutional rights away deserve the same fate. We would be disappointed if the state Supreme Court did not agree should the Envision Spokane proposals reach its docket.

The initiative process remains a valuable response to legislative inaction, or executive neglect. The judicial branch can be a tough judge, but this week it was a fair one.