In 1908, our forefathers enshrined in the Maine Constitution the right of the citizens to organize petition drives to bring about changes that the Legislature refuses to make. We also have the right to mount referendums to overturn laws that violate the popular will. This is called the People’s Veto. In Maine, the people are sovereign. We have the right to make laws or reject laws passed in Augusta. I have talked about the people’s veto in previous updates.
Some in the Legislature don’t necessarily like this. Fortunately, they can’t eliminate the people’s petition rights short of amending the Constitution. But certain legislators, undeterred, are trying to chip away at our sacred rights through the back door.
In this Legislature, three separate bills were submitted by the majority party lawmakers dealing with referendums. One sought a constitutional amendment requiring that initiative supporters show how much the proposal would cost and how it would be paid for. That bill, LD 1692, was crushed in the House on March 29 (Roll call 327).
A second bill, LD 1730, won overwhelming support. This one will require that businesses receiving compensation for circulating petitions register with the Secretary of State.
I’d like to focus on the third and by far the most threatening bill, because it would have chilled the whole process of gathering signatures. That measure, sponsored by Rep. Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, was killed in committee. Berry is a position of leadership, but even his colleagues understood that the bill was so bad that it risked a popular backlash. Still, it’s worth examining to help understand the methods of some supported to erode our liberty.
Last summer, anti-tax volunteers gathered more than 60,000 signatures to stop a huge sales tax expansion passed by the majority party last spring. By getting enough signatures to block the law, petitioners guaranteed that it could not take effect in January, as planned. In June, voters will have the opportunity to repeal it outright.
Rep. Berry and some of his colleagues showed up at county fairs last summer where petitioners were collecting signatures. In certain instances he apparently attempted to interfere with citizens’ right to sign their names.
This massive new tax law, let me point out, would expand the sales tax to about 100 new categories, everything from car repairs and movie tickets to house cleaning. It would burden thousands of small businesses at a time when many are already on the ropes. Moreover, it would jack up the tax on meals and lodging from 7 percent to 8.5 percent. Proponents argued that we would “export” the tax to tourists, but over 70 percent of Maine restaurant meals are ordered by Maine residents.
The law also would give substantial income tax breaks to the highest-paid Mainers – those making over $350,000 a year. The problem is that it pays for those tax breaks by hammering the poor and the middle class. The so-called income tax reduction would provide a $39 cut for average-income Mainers; but because the bill freezes the inflation indexing until 2014. This could be a big tax increase masquerading as an income tax “cut.”
Some were so infuriated by the success of the petition drive that they supported the introduction LD 1690 “An act An Act To Prevent Predatory Signature Gathering and Ensure a Clean Citizen Initiative and People’s Veto Process.” The most menacing provision would have required the Secretary of State to compile and post electronic lists of certified signatures on the petitions. Presumably, these lists would be posted on state government Web sites to make them easily accessible to anyone who wants to see who signed a petition. From there, they would spread to the Internet.
These electronic postings could be used to intimidate citizens from signing petitions on controversial questions for fear of harassment, threats or even loss of employment. Would anyone have signed the medical marijuana petition, for example, if they knew their name would be published or that they might be singled out for a drug test? Maine has an “at will” employment law. It is legal for employers to discriminate against someone because of their political beliefs.
Thankfully, this bill has been vanquished in a bipartisan vote. But we must remain wary of legislators who would restrict our freedom.
Good update and information on the rights of the people of Maine, and the threats to these rights.
With due respect, Rep. Saviello, someone seems to have given you very bad information. I was paying close attention to these bills and your account is very odd. A few examples:
1) Most pieces of the “vanquished” LD 1690 were PASSED into law in two other bills, which you actually voted for.
2) Rep. Berry asked the committee to vote “no” on his bill because his ideas were already being carried out in other ways.
3) The point of all three bills was to give Mainers 1) information and 2) control over the use of their signature.
4) Berry’s bill did not propose to make signatures public. They already are. In fact, anyone who wants to can post the signatures to the internet at any time.
5) The new law you say will raise taxes actually LOWERS them. Mainers and out of state visitors each pay a little more on sales taxes, and ALL that money reduces Mainers’ income taxes. See http://www.nohighertaxes.com for details.
Again with all respect, Mr. Saviello, special interests are using paid signature gatherers more and more to “buy” Maine laws. That’s why I applaud Rep. Berry and the others who helped bring transparency to the sleazy, special-interest world of paid signature gathering.
on another subject, i would like to know your thoughts on the TRAVESTY that is the new state of maine republican party platform.
Of course it is possible, barely possible, remotely possible that Seth is not motivated by pure idealism, but by a desire to protect the power of the Democratic legislative majority. I know this sounds terribly cynical but such considerations really do sometimes enter into political calculations.
Prof. Frary: might you be accusing others of partisanship without first looking in the mirror?
HH says Saviello voted FOR most of Berry’s transparency proposals. So then why does he attack those ideas now?
The income tax reduction started out as bipartisan and still has prominent R supporters including Peter Mills and the four major Chambers of Commerce. By comparison, the attempt to veto it and raise our income taxes has been a misguided, highly partisan push from start to finish.
Look in the mirror. Do you really want to raise Mainers’ income taxes and help out of staters pay less, all in the name of partisan politics and petty insinuations?
Do you choose to be more like Margaret Chase Smith, or more like Joseph McCarthy?
Logger, It would serve the Republican party and the teabaggers well, if they would give serious consideration to your last question.
By the way Tom, i am still waiting for a thoughtful answer to my question of May 10th. As a constituent, your response is important to me.
I am the ranking Republican on the Joint Standing Committee on Legal and Veterans Affairs in the 124th Maine Legislature. For the record, Rep. Saviello is accurately portraying the bills that were handled by the Leglslature regarding the citizen petition process. The way this played out was that LD1690 and LD1730 were ugly bills when presented. The Republican Caucus preference was to kill both and bring forward a Committee bill which would have had reforms that we could agree on, but the majority chose to ignore that request and use LD1730 as the vehicle to address concerns over the petition process.
Some of Rep. Berry’s concepts were used in the final bill but no where near to the degree that he originally proposed. If you pull up the two bills as originally submitted, and then compare them to the final LD1730, you will see that we dealt with only the real issues. Signature removal for example was part of the Berry proposal, but we said no to that. In the end, we set up a registration requirement for groups that fund referendum efforts. Both the original Berry bill and the Nutting bill were terrible policy, and once people saw how bad they were, even the Democrats were not willing to support what was being proposed. We created small changes in the petition process to make it better. The original bills would have added hurdles, obstacles and intimidation into the process.
Electronic lists of who signs petitions are not public, in fact they do not exist at the present time. There are dicussions within the Secretary of State’s Office that they may initiate electronic databases to speed their review of petition drives. The Legal and Veteran’s Affairs Committee will need to deal with the issues that these lists raise next session in an effort to determine what is public information and when it should become public. The information has to have a legitimate public purpose other than “I just want to know”, in my opinion. Presently, people can photocopy petitions, and then manually create their own lists for their uses, which raises some privacy concerns, but not nearly as much as a premade database supplied by the S.O.S. office could raise.
Rep. Saviello was rightfully concerned about the original bills presented by Rep. Berry and Sen. Nutting. In this case, the Legislature did excercise restraint and demonstrated common sense in dealing with these bills. – Rep. Stacey Fitts, House District #29 – Pittsfield, Detroit & Clinton