In 1990, the Heritage Fund Initiative was passed by Arizona voters by a 3-2 margin.The Heritage Alliance has fought long and hard to protect the Fund from 33 Legislative attempts to divert the funding over the course of 18 years. Since the 1990 initiative passage, the Arizona Heritage Fund grants have provided more than $318 million for the preservation and enhancement of our State’s natural, cultural and recreational resources.

This week, please call your House Members and ask them to oppose HCR2045 and HCR2044. Please tell them to protect the citizens’ rights to the initiative process.

HCR2045 county officers; elections; technical correction (Adams) has a strike everything amendment on initiative and referendum. It refers to the ballot yet another constitutional amendment that if approved would significantly restrict the right to refer legislation via the initiative process. It requires that the signatures for an initiative be turned into the Secretary of State on December 31 of the year before the election rather than four months prior to the election. This is done without reducing the required number of signatures, so will erect a huge barrier to referring measures by those without deep pockets. It also will mean the Legislature has even more of an opportunity to refer competing measures. It changes the voting requirements for amending a citizen initiative passed by the voters from a 3/4 vote to a 2/3 vote, says it must further the intent of the people versus further the purposes and it allows changes to “correct problems.” You can only guess what the legislature might see as a problem. This would significantly weaken the Voter Protection Act, which was passed after years of frustration with the Legislature weakening measures passed by the people. It includes numerous other provisions as well.

HCR2044 voter-protection; temporary budgetary suspension (Pearce, Barnes, Biggs, et al) refers to the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the legislature to reduce appropriations for measures approved by the voters in any year where there was a projected budget deficit. This would eviscerate the Voter Protection Act. It passed out of the House 32-27-1 and has been assigned to Appropriations in the Senate. OPPOSE. Please ask your legislators to oppose this one too.

To find your House members’ contact information just click or paste this website into your browser:

http://www.azleg.gov/memberRoster.asp?Body=H

Or you can call (602) 926-4221 or outside the Phoenix area 1-800-352-8404 and just ask to be connected to your representative’s office.

~ Thanks for your consideration ~

This entry was posted on April 21, 2008 at 3:25 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Posted in Call To Action Legislative Watch Teams by DFAwebstaff Comments Off