PHOENIX — A judge will decide whether lawmakers have an absolute right to ask voters to approve two changes in law in a single act, even if they may only want one of them and not the other.
The proposal at issue asks voters to amend the Citizens Clean Elections Act to keep publicly financed candidates from using any of their funds to buy services from political parties and political consultants.
Danny Adelman, attorney for the commission that administers the law, acknowledged that could prove popular.
But at a hearing Thursday, Adelman pointed out to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Teresa Sanders that the measure put on the ballot by the Republican-controlled Legislature also seeks to give the Governor’s Regulatory Review Council, a panel of political appointees, the power to veto all proposed commission rules. That covers everything from its power to force public disclosure of campaign spending to mandates for publicly funded candidates to submit to at least one debate.
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That, he said, is likely to prove a much harder sell to voters who in 1998 created the commission and the voluntary system of public financing of elections.
Adelman told Sanders that joining the two issues was not just happenstance. He said it was a ploy by lawmakers “in the hope that voters are forced to take this all-or-nothing position that it will somehow pass.â€
He said the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Constitution requires that acts of the Legislature “shall embrace but one subject and matters properly connected therewith.â€
And Adelman warned the judge that if lawmakers get away with linking these two issues it would open the door for other sorts of legislative shenanigans in future ballot referrals.
“They could pass something that joins together highway funding with a ban on abortion, or with something completely different like abolition of the death penalty,†Adelman said.
He said that’s why there are constitutional provisions to prevent this kind of “logrolling,†combining what he said are unrelated popular and unpopular provisions into a single measure.
But Assistant Attorney General Rusty Crandell told Sanders that constitutional provision applies only to “acts of the Legislature.†He said the vote by lawmakers to send the issue to voters does not fit that definition.
Anyway, Crandell argued, if there is a violation of constitutional single-subject provisions, that can be litigated only after the measure becomes law — assuming it remains on the ballot and assuming voters approve.
Mike Liburdi, a private attorney hired by Republican legislative leaders, went a step farther. He said there is no violation, saying there need be only a “natural connection†among various ballot provisions.
Whatever Sanders decides, her’s is unlikely to be the last word, as the losing side is virtually certain to appeal.
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