If you’re inclined to seek sanity in the state Supreme Court’s decision on tax-cutting Initiative 747, don’t expect to find a quiet, contemplative corner for your reading and reflections.

It’s too late. Outraged voices are shrieking the predictable about arrogant judges dismissing the public as incapable of informed judgment. Both Gov. Chris Gregoire and her likely repeat challenger, Republican Dino Rossi, are talking about a legislative fix – Rossi with more volume and urgency.

The rage isn’t entirely off the mark, although the issue is more complicated than that.

The basics are these:

“In 2000, Washington voters approved Initiative 722, which generally restricted local governments’ property tax revenues from growing more than 2 percent a year without a vote of the people. The limit had been 6 percent.

“Several governments and nonprofit organizations challenged the measure. When a court put it on hold, tax-cutting advocates went to work on a new initiative that would become Initiative 747 and would outdo 722 by setting the limit at 1 percent.

“In 2001, with signature gatherers working to qualify 747 for the fall ballot, the 722 case reached the Supreme Court, which held it unconstitutional on Sept. 20, restoring the original 6 percent tax-growth lid.

“This rendered the language of Initiative 747 obsolete, as it would no longer lower the tax lid from Initiative 722’s 2 percent to 1 percent but from the now-resurrected 6 percent to 1 percent.

Writing as though voters had no access to the intense news coverage, public debate, editorial comment and other discourse of the 2001 campaign, the Supreme Court ruled Initiative 747 unconstitutional.

That’s OK. We thought it was a bad idea in the first place.

But the court’s lack of faith in voter intelligence invited the denunciations now coming its way.

Which is not to say the public doesn’t bear some responsibility for this clumsy outcome. It’s not a matter of voter intelligence, it’s a matter of voter diligence.

Writing laws by initiative, a treasured legacy of our populist past, is an important right, but it has been used recklessly of late. Manipulators such as initiative meister Tim Eyman have hijacked a process intended to be a grass-roots safeguard.

Today, well-heeled interest groups write complicated initiatives behind closed doors, pay petition circulators to collect signatures, and win them with slogans and sales pitches. Citizens eager for a painless simplistic solution to their problems oblige with a penstroke and a vote.

For all its faults, the Legislature provides a better way to write law. Bills are written and available for public examination and input for weeks, even months. Hearings are held, amendments considered, voices heard. Two bodies of elected representatives must agree on a single version and the governor must concur – all in public view.

It takes more work to follow political campaigns and the legislative process. It’s harder than scribbling a hasty signature as you hurry into the grocery store.

But if sanity is what you long for, it’s a more reasonable way to set public policy in a self-governing society.