Is this a huge usurpation of the rights of the public? Here’s the argument:
“The Ballot Simplification Committee conducts a public hearing process, benefiting from extensive input by City residents and other interested parties, and transparent deliberation among committee members.”
By its plain language, the Waterfront Heights Initiative usurps the legal function of the Ballot Simplification Committee and City Attorney’s office for preparing ballot questions.
The Waterfront Heights Initiative disposes of this “extensive public input and citizen participation.” Instead, it mandates the use of specific language that hijacks the entire process. Regardless of what you think of the merits of the initiative, allowing wealthy initiative backers to supplant the elected City Attorney, the appointed Ballot Simplification Committee, and the entire public process surrounding the development of ballot questions is very bad policy.
I’m for public process, and I’m generally pretty impressed with the Ballot Simplification Committee, a pretty nonpartisan bunch that does a good job making sense of complex legal language. But I’m not sure this waterfront initiative is quite so evil or so unusual.
The city attorney and the committee can still craft the language they need; it just has to include a few words about heights. And that’s nothing new: Check out Prop. D, the 2001 measure that almost everyone supported that banned new airport runways in the Bay without a vote of the people:
“The general statement of the ballot measure to be voted on, pursuant to this section, shall read as follows: Shall the voters approve (insert name of project) that would fill in (insert number of acres) of San Francisco Bay? Yes or no.”
I don’t remember anyone making a fuss about that language back then, and I don’t see how it has caused, or will cause, any problems in the future.
At any rate, in the past when ballot measures have been invalidated, it’s been on account of a flaw (sometimes a ridiculous, silly flaw) in the signature-gathering process; judges have found that petitions were invalid because they didn’t have the proper language. Yanking a measure before voter approval because if its content seems unlikely. That’s the kind of thing that comes up after the election – and since the provisions of this initiative are severable, a judge could toss out that (really minor) provision and leave the rest intact.
Here’s what’s really going on: Foes of this measure realize it’s so far ahead in the polls that it would be almost impossible to beat with a normal electoral strategy. So there’s this, and this, and now this.
In the end, I think the voters will have their say.
