Columnist Jon Ralston:What happens when we take too much initiative

Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005 | 8:13 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face with Jon Ralston on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the daily e-mail newsletter RalstonFlash.com. His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com.

CARSON CITY, February 2015 -- Gov. Barbara Buckley's State of the State speech this week lasted only eight minutes -- two minutes under a time limit passed by voters who enacted the Shut the Governor Up Initiative in last year's elections.

Buckley's speech was attended in the capital by the five members of the state Senate and the five members of the Assembly -- both houses have had their membership dramatically reduced by initiatives during the last few election cycles. The old Gang of 63 is no more; it is now the Gang of 10, and neither they nor the governor can do much. Or for too long. The Send them Home Early Initiative, amended four times since it first passed in 2008, has reduced legislative sessions to a week every four years.

"I would like to propose some worthy new programs tonight," Buckley said in her speech. "But because of the 52 initiatives that passed during the 2014 elections, I now only have a say over 8 percent of the state budget. We, the elected officials, no longer represent the people; we are mere functionaries, carrying out mandates by special interests who have taken advantage of public apathy and anger to enact initiatives."

Buckley's logic can't be assailed. Nevada already is facing state and federal lawsuits because of a conflicting amalgam of initiatives that have passed since 2006. Besides Tax and Spending Control and Prop 13, which have forced several local governments into bankruptcy, we have:

* The Teacher Fairness Initiative, enacted by voters in 2008, which forced state lawmakers to fund per-pupil spending to the national average. The 2009 fiscal crisis resulted in four special sessions (now outlawed by the No More Special Sessions Initiative, which passed in 2010).

* The Boost the Guinn Rebate Initiative, passed in 2006 and amended successively in 2008, 2010 and 2012, has increased the mandatory giveback to taxpayers to at least $1 billion annually.

* The Make Gaming Pay Its Fair Share Initiative, passed in 2008 and which boosted the casino tax to 25 percent on the industry, was counterbalanced by the Save the Strip Initiative, which was pushed by the gamers and forced the state to reduce the tax burden to 2 percent for any casino willing to spend more than $25,000 to ameliorate problem gambling.

* The Make Business Pay Its Fair Share Initiative, pushed in 2010 by the casinos after the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce was found to have backed the Make Gaming Pay Its Fair Share Initiative. The measure mandated a 10 percent net profits tax on all Nevada businesses, but exempted gaming. In 2012 the chamber and its allies qualified a Save the State Economy Initiative, which gave massive tax credits to any business that gave employees days off for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Buckley also mentioned how the Gang of 10 and the governor are shackled in areas other than fiscal policy, too.

One example: The labor movement's success in 2008 and 2010 in erasing the state's right to work law and increasing the minimum wage to $10 an hour has been counterbalanced during the same election cycles by business groups passing initiatives on Paycheck Protection (forcing unions to get permission from members to spend their dues) and the More Than Just At Will Initiative, which allows employers to fire employees (and immunizes employers from lawsuits) for any reason at any time.

There is no end in sight. Grass-roots groups, led by Liberty Watch, succeeded in 2010 in mandating that a petition could qualify if a person and four friends or family members signed it.

Thus, the 2014 ballot was 125 pages; the 2016 ballot is expected to be as long as 150 pages. But thanks to the Vote as Early as You Want Initiative, enacted in 2012, voters can begin casting ballots the day after filing ends in the spring to save time and money.

That way, they can give as little thought and time to the issues of the day as the politicians are now allowed to do because the voters and those they elect have been rendered almost irrelevant by the initiative process.