Thompson: Georgians need popular initiative option

If there's one thing the recently concluded state legislative session proved, it's that it's time for some initiative in Georgia.

As in "popular initiative," that is, the process by which citizens can do for themselves what their legislators are unwilling, unable or uninterested in doing for them. It's a process available to voters in any number of states across the country, and it got some legislative attention in the 1995 session of the Georgia General Assembly, although it went nowhere, for reasons that will become apparent.

Briefly, popular initiative is the name given to a couple of processes, direct initiative and indirect initiative, by which the electorate can amend a state constitution or put a new law on the books. Both varieties of popular initiative require the circulation of a petition proposing a constitutional amendment or a new law, with a further requirement that the petition include the signatures of a significant percentage of the voting population. In some cases, that threshold can be as much as 15 percent of the electorate.

A direct initiative bypasses the legislative body entirely, with the proposed amendment or law getting placed on the ballot after the petition, holding the requisite percentage of valid signatures, is filed with state officials.

An indirect initiative moves the issue into the legislature, with voters getting a crack at changing the law only if the legislature fails to enact the change sought in the petition.

Everybody clear on what we're talking about here?

Good. Because if there ever was a time when popular initiative made sense in Georgia, that time is now. There is no way to characterize this year's legislative session as anything other than an abject failure.

Here's a sampling of what happened in this year's session:

► For yet another year, as metro Atlanta traffic gets more and more gridlocked, making the state less and less attractive in terms of economic development, the legislature failed to pass any sort of measure to fund much-needed transportation infrastructure improvements there and throughout the remainder of the state.

Instead, Georgians watched as the House of Representatives defended an indefensible approach to a statewide transportation tax, an approach that included a list of projects developed in secret, some of which projects might have been political payoffs. The House's intransigence kept a far more reasonable Senate approach, which would have allowed counties across the state to band together to assess a local tax to fund transportation projects, from being enacted.

► Also for yet another year, the legislature couldn't bring itself to pass legislation that would have allowed individual communities across the state to decide whether alcohol could be sold in stores on Sundays. Notice here that the GOP-dominated legislature was acting in direct contravention of the bedrock Republican principle of local control.

► And, finally, for yet another year, the legislature failed to enact a common-sense piece of legislation that would have required the use of seat belts in pickup trucks when those trucks aren't engaged in farm-related activity. In striking that dubious blow in favor of "individual responsibility," lawmakers also kept the state from receiving, for yet another year, at least a few million dollars in federal highway funds.

With public initiative, all of these issues could be taken out of the hands of the legislators and placed in the hands of the people.

Of course, it's not difficult to see why popular initiative might not necessarily find favor with the state's lawmakers.

If popular initiative was an option in Georgia, the state's voters might start wondering why they need a legislature for anything more than its constitutionally mandated duty to approve a budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

And if, practically speaking, it turns out that all the legislature winds up doing is passing a budget, then the platoons of lobbyists seeking special favors for their industries, businesses or other interests would shrink dramatically.

Which would mean fewer free meals, free drinks, free concert tickets, free sports tickets and other largess larded on lawmakers willing to forget that they work for the people of this state.

• Jim Thompson is editorial page editor of the Athens Banner-Herald. He can be contacted at (706) 208-2222 or by e-mail at jim.thompson@onlineathens.com.