For the week of September 17 - 23, 2003

Rebuke to arrogance

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Riding roughshod over broader interests of Idahoans seems to be a congenital habit of the Republican-controlled State Legislature. How many years have GOP legislators refused to comply with a court order to fund fixes of public schools?

Even the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seemed stunned by legislative haughtiness when ruling last week that Idaho’s law making it virtually impossible for voters to stage initiative elections was an "egregious" violation of the U.S. Constitution.

"Egregious" is about right in describing the Legislature’s overbearing arrogance: It means "conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible".

Originally declared unconstitutional in 1997 by U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill, the high-hurdle law required citizen initiatives to have signatures from 6 percent of the population in at least half the state’s counties—this despite the fact that 60 percent of Idaho’s population is in only nine of 44 counties.

Republicans who wrote the law had only one goal: To crush any citizen effort to rebel against legislators with a special election.

Perhaps Republicans aren’t sufficiently chastened by the court ruling and will pressure Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in a final attempt to gut the democratic power of the people.

If Wasden does buckle to legislators and he appeals, this will only confirm what Idahoans already know: The Legislature holds citizen rights in utter contempt.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.