Fend off attack on citizens' initiative rights

Daniel Radford and Jim Jones might be miles and years apart, but they’re as close to right on as they can get.

Today you’ll read, on the facing page, a piece penned by young Radford, a sophomore at prestigious Emory University in Georgia. Radford hails from Sandpoint.

On the March 8 op-ed page, The Press published an opinion piece written by Jones, former chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court.

Both men have taken aim at — and hit squarely in the bull’s-eye — a dangerous Idaho bill that would undermine the power of the people.

Republican Sen. Scott Grow of Eagle is sponsoring legislation that would make citizen initiatives much more difficult to get on the ballot. Grow, who’s being advised by failed Historic Racing promoter John Sheldon, according to public records, is proposing nearly double the current number of signatures required to qualify an initiative for the ballot while cutting by two-thirds the time a campaign has to gather those signatures. That would make grassroots, citizen-driven initiatives far more difficult to put together.

Justice Jones noted in his column two weeks ago that Idaho created the initiative process in 1911 as a way for the citizens to enact or repeal legislation when they disagreed with the Legislature. Jones wrote: “Article I, section 2 of the Idaho Constitution declares: ‘All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform or abolish the same whenever they may deem it necessary.’”

Thanks to a public records request by Boise State Public Radio, direct links between Sheldon, Grow and, as Daniel Radford outlines, payday loan interests have been clearly established. And those links stink. For more background, see the Idaho Associated Press article March 16 headlined, Group Lobbies to Make It Harder to Run Citizen Initiatives (https://bit.ly/2XZhHD0).

It doesn’t take great imagination to conclude that Grow’s bill is both a reaction to the successful Medicaid expansion initiative, which the Legislature refused to take action on for years, and a thinly veiled wall to prevent Idahoans from setting limits on payday loan interest. The gem state’s interest rate on payday loans, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, is 652 percent — among the highest in the nation. No wonder the lenders began fretting when Medicaid expansion passed easily.

If you want to preserve your right to ultimately determine Idaho laws, then protect the provision of citizen initiatives as they currently exist.