Hearing set on initiative, referendum rights

Following a series of legal and political discussions going back into January, the Spokane Valley City Council has scheduled a public hearing and vote on whether the city should enact initiative and referendum rights for Valley residents.

At the request of Councilman Steve Taylor, a separate resolution to authorize only referendums also will be put to a vote at the council’s June 28 meeting.

Referendums challenge ordinances already passed by a city council, giving citizens a chance to vote on those matters. Initiatives are a way for citizens to propose laws, ensuring a vote by the public if the council rejects the proposal.

“The general consensus was that people thought it was in there when we incorporated,” Councilman Dick Denenny said recently.

But late last year, a group of people looking to challenge a proposed utility tax noticed that authorization for citizens to put measures on ballots wasn’t in the city ordinances. Although referendums and initiatives can’t usually address tax issues at the municipal level, several people asked that the council put those rights in place.

“I’m frustrated because this has gone on so long,” Valley resident Clark Hager said at Tuesday’s City Council study session.

He had planned to show the council a petition he had circulated supporting the measure with more than 200 signatures, but the session didn’t include time for public comment.

Hager said he and others who pushed for incorporation cited the lack of initiative and referendum rights under the county as a reason to form the city in 2003, he said.

But early on, some council members expressed reservations about enacting a process they said can lead to ordinances that haven’t been vetted through the regular legislative process, and under the expertise of city officials.

Citing a wariness of special interest groups, Taylor said at the meeting “the people chose our leaders, and the leaders make their decisions during their specified terms. And if the majority of the public does not agree with the decisions we make, we should be turned out at the ballot box.”

As a result of discussion at previous meetings, City Attorney Carey Driskell presented the council with three options: allow initiatives only; allow referendums only; or allow both. Taylor was the only council member who expressed interest in passing one but not the other.

“I don’t think there is a legal requirement that if you adopt one, you have to adopt the other,” Driskell said. Although he hadn’t seen an instance of initiative and referendum rights not being passed together in any other Washington municipality, he said state law doesn’t prohibit it.

At the state level, Washington citizens can challenge laws through referendums or propose new ones through initiatives. Also, various state laws allow people to gather signatures to put on the ballot issues such as disincorporation, city council pay and even measures to enact initiative and referendum rights at the local level.

If passed locally, initiative and referendum rights would allow city ordinances to be proposed or challenged in much the same way as state laws, with a list of exceptions that includes rezones, appropriations, annexations and other measures.