Ballot Initiatives

BREAKING: Peter Kinder has tweeted something reasonable. 

Democratic Party Chairman Susan Montee outlined the Party's proposal to reduce the size of the Missouri House to 103 members from its existing 163 in an op-ed for the Missouri Record here. The Beacon has more here.

In 1990, then-Gov. John Ashcroft endorsed an initiative petition that would reduce the size of the Missouri House to 103. 

The Post-Dispatch has a good editorial today looking at efforts in the Missouri General Assembly to overturn the will of the voters on 2010's Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, which passed with 52% of the vote in an election that was favorable to Republican candidates; and 2008's Proposition C, the Clean Energy Initiative, which passed with 66% of the vote and created a renewable electricity standard in the state, requiring utility companies to gradually increase their usage of renewable energy.  Not included in the editorial are Republicans' ongoing efforts to undermine the 2006 vote to provide for annual increases in Missouri's minimum wage based on the pace of inflation in the Midwest.

Still, it's a good editorial that gets at the heart of the matter:

The people of Missouri are becoming an awful nuisance to their legislators in Jefferson City.

Missouri's state representatives and senators, after all, slog away for four long months a year (part-time, with a 10-day spring break), making the tough decisions about which bills written by which lobbyists they should pass.

But every now and then, some nervy Missourians get it into their heads to read the part of the state constitution about how to make laws without the Legislature. When they succeed, legislators then have to hole up with more lobbyists to figure out the best way to nullify the laws that the people passed without them....

Travis Brown, Rex Sinquefield's top lobbyist and a business partner of Speaker Steve Tilley, tells Politico's Dave Catanese that their sales tax increase proposal will be filed with the Secretary of State tomorrow.

POLITICO has learned that Jefferson City lobbyist Travis Brown and wealthy conservative investor Rex Sinquefield will submit the initial paperwork for their dramatic plan to revise the state's tax system to the Secretary of State Friday.

Their initiative outlines nine different ways to eliminate the state's 6 percent income tax and replace it with a sales tax that does not exceed 7 percent.

Not that this proposal caps the rate at 7%, which presumably means that it does not include the "prebate" scheme that some acolytes had discussed as a way to make the plan slightly less regressive.  This cap is even lower than the official Senate estimate put forward last year, "around 7.5 to 8 percent."  When legislators talked about adding a "prebate," the sales tax rate was "closer to 11 percent."

Ruh-ro, Shaggy.   The Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts Action Fund (the campaign fighting ShowMe Better Courts' ballot initiative) says James Harris' signature gathering effort has come up woefully short in Congressional Districts 5, 7 and 9. 

Translation: The initiative won't make it on the ballot.

UPDATE: A statement James Harris provided to The Star suggests that Harris may pin the blame on "petition company reports." 

"The people are not able to come to the people right now with anything halfway controversial."

Sen. Matt Bartle (R-Lee's Summit) in a Senate Financial & Governmental Organizations and Elections Committee hearing this afternoon.  Bartle was lamenting the apparent lack of controversial legislation in the Missouri General Assembly in a debate about SB796, intended to limit abuse of the initiative petition process

Listen:

UPDATE: Dave Roland, an analyst at Sinquefield's Show-Me Insitutute, has responded to this post in the comments.

I see that David Stokes at Rex Sinquefield's Show-Me Institute blog is criticizing Oregonians' use of a ballot initiative to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy.  It passed by a wide margin,  but Stokes isn't digging the voters' decision-- the Oregon vote, he says, is an example of "why I prefer a representative republic to direct democracy."

Stokes disdain for ballot initiatives is ironic (to say the least) considering Sinquefield's sponsorship of at least five initiatives to end the 1% earnings tax in St. Louis and Kansas City. Sinquefield has even put $500,000 of his personal fortune into a brand new campaign account called "Let Voters Decide."