Utah Republican senators voted Friday for a bill that would put an estimated $1.4 million price tag on future citizen initiatives.
The measure, SB73, sponsored by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, would require the backers of any initiative to publish the text of the initiative in newspapers across the state for 60 days prior to it going on the ballot.
The Utah Constitution sets the same requirement for the Legislature when lawmakers want to put a constitutional amendment before voters for ratification.
The Legislature’s failure to comply with that publication requirement last year was part of the reason that the Utah Supreme Court disqualified a proposed amendment that would have guaranteed lawmakers the ability to repeal or amend any citizen-passed ballot initiative and led to the disqualification of another amendment to change funding for education and social services.
Those setbacks have put ballot initiatives in lawmakers’ crosshairs. Senate President Stuart Adams opened the legislative session Tuesday calling for limitations on the initiative process.
“We cannot let unelected special interest groups outside of Utah run initiatives and override our republic, destroy our businesses, demean, impugn and cast aside those who are duly elected to represent their neighbors and friends in Utah,” he said. “We will not let initiatives driven by out-of-state money turn Utah into California.”
Friday morning, Fillmore was asking his colleagues to allocate $1.4 million that it would cost in order to comply with the publication requirement for another constitutional amendment he is proposing that would make ballot initiatives more difficult.
Because the proposed publication requirement for citizen-led initiatives is identical to that currently required for constitutional amendments, the passage of SB73 into law means legislators are imposing that projected $1.4 million burden to the backers of any future initiatives.
“Utahns don’t want their constitutional right to ballot initiative taken away, and this is just one more step towards making the right practically impossible,” said Katie Wright, executive director of Better Boundaries, the group that spearheaded a 2018 ballot initiative to ban partisan gerrymandering. “Whether it’s onerous procedures or prohibitive costs, legislative leadership’s intent is clear. They don’t want us to have this right anymore.”
There have been just seven ballot initiatives that have passed since the right was added to the Utah Constitution in 1900 — three of those in 2018. In addition to the gerrymandering initiative, one expanded Medicaid to insure low-income Utahns and another legalized medical marijuana. Backers of those efforts spent an average of $2 million on their campaigns.
Fillmore’s bill would also require groups proposing future initiatives to pay for an analysis of the fiscal impact of their effort and identify what state programs they would cut in order to fund them.
“The voters need to know what choice they’re making,” Fillmore said during a debate on the bill Friday. “Sometimes citizen initiatives can look like sunshine and rainbows, and that’s great. People want sunshine and rainbows. But what if having sunshine and rainbows means we have to eliminate ice cream?”
The bill passed out of the Senate by a vote of 21-7 and goes to the House for consideration. None of those who opposed the bill raised the issue of the cost of publishing the proposed initiatives in newspapers.
Fillmore’s proposed constitutional amendment that he sought funding for Friday would require any citizen initiative that includes a tax increase to receive 60% support from voters in order to pass.
The 2018 Medicaid and medical marijuana initiatives also included tax increases, meaning they would have needed to clear the 60% threshold, had Fillmore’s constitutional amendment been in place when they were on the ballot. Neither proposal got above 53.4%.
A proposal to amend the constitution to change the publication requirement to make future constitutional amendments less costly is being drafted by Rep. Anthony Loubet, R-Kearns. It, too, is expected to cost $1.4 million to publish ahead of the 2026 election.
That means if Fillmore’s bill becomes law and Loubet’s forthcoming constitutional amendment is ratified by voters, the Legislature would have a lower publication threshold when attempting to amend the Utah Constitution than initiative backers would have when trying to change a law.
Voters cannot amend the Utah Constitution through a ballot initiative.
Note to readers, 4:45 p.m. • This story has been updated to include a statement from Better Boundaries.
