Audio By Carbonatix
Democracy inaction: On May 9, thanks to folks who signed a pair of petitions, Dallas voters will decide whether the city should build a convention center hotel and whether to enact strict limits on public subsidies to private developers of hotels, condos and shopping centers. Odds are most of you reading this won’t bother to vote on these city charter amendments. That’ll be a shame, because it could be a while before you get another chance.
A bill before the Legislature would make it much harder for voters to petition to change the city’s charter: Senate Bill 690 would oblige petitioners to get at least 10 percent of a city’s registered voters to sign—current law requires either 5 percent of qualified voters or 20,000 signatures, whichever number is smaller. Dallas has more than 1.1 million registered voters, so SB 690 would spell more than a fivefold increase in the number of required signatures. (The bill affects only home-rule cities, which includes Dallas, but Buzz isn’t going to tell you the rest about what a home-rule city is because it’s really boring.)
What you should know is this: Austin has heard the voice of the people and would appreciate it if the people would pipe down.
Austinite Mike Ford, creator of the Web site www.InitiativeforTexas.org, has been fighting a 15-year losing battle to persuade the Legislature to let Texans decide if they should be allowed to use the power of initiative to amend the state constitution, as is done frequently in states like California. He alerted Buzz to SB 690, which is sort of in his wheelhouse since it concerns the kind of direct, participatory democracy he likes. While legislators have resisted his call for initiative power at the state level, he says, voters have been given a freer hand to fiddle with their own cities’ charters.
SB 690 would put a stop to that, he says, since it’s already tough enough to get even 20,000 people to sign a petition. Petition gatherers are banned from government property, post offices and most stores. “You’re sort of only allowed to collect signatures in a dog park,” he says. “There are all sorts of unseen rules put in place to restrict petition gatherers.”
That means the process already favors those with the money to hire professionals to gather signatures. So much for vox populi—unless, of course, the populi want to let their legislators know what they think of this bill. SB 690 is sitting before the Senate’s Committee on Intergovernmental Relations, which is chaired by Dallas’ own Senator Royce West. —Patrick Williams
