INITIATIVES: Process needs tightening

I read the comments of Brent Regan about the passed initiative on Medicaid expansion. I then contacted one of our elected officials now in Boise and asked for comments on the new proposed rules for initiatives in Idaho. The answer was enlightening in the fact that we did have many dollars coming into Idaho to help pass the Medicaid expansion initiative. I have no view whatsoever on the Medicaid expansion. My concern is with the way the signatures were obtained.

Brent Regan was spot on with his comments. Let’s look now at the article in the Coeur d’Alene Press on April 9. Rebecca Schroeder, executive director of Reclaim Idaho, stated they never received any money from the Fairness Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that receives a large part of its funding from a health care union in California.

A number of states have initiative laws that allow certain voting areas, such as big populated cities or big populated counties where a blitz by paid and volunteer workers secure signatures on any initiative they are pushing. I believe that no money was given to Reclaim Idaho, but I also believe that organization skills and how to pass initiatives was given. Indeed, the Fairness Project did send in workers to gather signatures and help with the organization skills.

The problem with our current initiative laws are somewhat similar to our Electoral College and the desire to abandon it. If we had direct vote for president and no electoral college, we would have a few large cities and highly populated states control the entire destiny of the United States. Here in Idaho, a few cities and counties can pass an initiative that effects all of the state of Idaho. We need to have better laws to protect us from the very problem we now have.

We have to tighten and change our initiative process so we are not the patsy of any special interest or other out of state force willing to buy their way into Idaho. By the way, the elected official I talked to is not in any way part of the far right elected officials from North Idaho.

JAMES CROWE

Coeur d’Alene