INITIATIVE: Listen up, voters

The Idaho Legislature has gone power mad. The majority party is currently hell-bent on destroying the Idaho public’s right to the initiative process.

Senate bill 1110, would change the already too tough requirement to collect signatures of 6 percent of the registered voters in 18 Legislative districts, to collecting signatures of 6 percent of voters in each and every one of Idaho’s 35 districts, in order to get a measure on a ballot for Idaho voters to decide.

Passage of this bill will essentially kill the public’s option to generate legislation that the Legislature chooses to avoid. That would be goodbye to volunteers and hello only to well-healed operations that can afford to pay signature gatherers.

Within my memory, very positive steps have been made only because of the initiative process. They include: the Sunshine Initiative, which requires political candidates to report who is giving them campaign dollars; the ban on dredge mining of Idaho’s rivers; the Homeowner’s Tax Exemption which could use a boost, and more recently, Medicaid Expansion, which brings federal dollars to Idaho to help with health costs.

Don’t let the Legislature kill your right, our right, to originate laws the public wants, needs and should have. Write or call your state legislators. If it passes the Senate and House, urge Governor Little to veto Senate Bill 1110.

MARY LOU REED

Coeur d’Alene