Ariz. political leaders, you are not the bosses of us

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the illusion that our leaders are actually working for us, it is the right of the people to show them who is boss.

In Arizona, several citizen groups are working right now to show them who is boss. To protect public schools, a public preserve and public elections.

Fortunately, in this state, we have the right not only to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but also to go over the heads of those who claim to represent us.

This state’s founders wisely gave Arizonans the right to make laws via citizen initiative and to veto laws via referendum.

Save Our Schools Arizona

Last year, six women met while at the state Capitol testifying against a proposed universal school voucher program.

They couldn’t understand why Gov. Doug Ducey and the Legislature were devising more ways to siphon money to private schools from the already underfunded public schools attended by 95 percent of Arizona’s students.

So these political neophytes decided to do something about it. Against all odds and the best political prognostications of the best political prognosticators, they mounted a referendum campaign to stop the new law.

They had no money, no organization. Just a belief that our leaders were acting contrary to the will of the public.

After collecting 111,540 signatures and fending off a legal challenge, Save Our Schools Arizona put a freeze on our leaders’ universal voucher law. On Nov. 8, Proposition 305 will allow voters to decide whether — or not — to go forward with the universal expansion of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.

Look for a battle from the big-money interests that see Arizona as ground zero of their plan to privatize education.

This year, Ducey talked up the need to defeat the referendum so that the law can take effect.

“This is a very real fight in my state,” Ducey told a group of bankrollers at a meeting of the Koch brothers’ network. “I didn’t run for governor to play small ball. I think this is an important idea.”

I don’t know whether Save Our Schools Arizona can win, given the money they’ll be up against. But six women and their network of 3,000 volunteers sparked a change in this state, putting power into the hands of average people.

“We put education policy on the front-burner across the state,” Dawn Penich-Thacker told me. “We started the conversation in regular circles,

with regular teachers, regular parents and regular folks not just policy wonks and politcos.”

Protect Our Preserve and No DDC

Scottsdale’s leaders have long dreamed of building a desert interpretative center at the main entrance to the McDowell Sonoran Preserve.

What they haven’t dreamed about: asking voters whether they actually want to foot the bill to develop land they have taxed themselves — and others who spend money in Scottsdale — to preserve.

Citizens who oppose the project had this idea that voters should get to decide whether they want to develop land they have spent a billion dollars to preserve.

But the council — which has long been working with a politically connected non-profit set up to plan and run the tourist attraction — had no interest in putting this to a public vote.

“Being a longtime supporter of this vision, I am not interested in creating obstacles,” Councilwoman Virginia Korte said in 2016, when the council voted not to put it on the ballot. “I want to see what this DDC can become.”

The city attorney, meanwhile, said city leaders don't have to ask the public for permission to build the $68 million Desert Discovery Center, now rebranded as Desert Edge.

So a pair of citizen groups launched an initiative drive aimed at changing the city’s charter.

“Citizens were shut out of the process by special interests and lobbyists,” Jason Alexander of No DDC told me. “We were denied a vote on land we taxed ourselves to buy, and objected to new debt and millions in future sales taxes. Citizens’ interests and financial stability were not represented by our development-focused City Council.”

This week, they are expected to turn in 37,000 signatures, well over the 24,000 needed for the Nov. 8 ballot.

If they’re successful, Scottsdale voters will be able to mandate that before our leaders can develop the preserve, they must get permission from the public that paid for the preserve.

Radical idea, that one.

Outlaw Dirty Money

Increasingly, Arizona’s campaigns are being influenced by anonymous interests that run independent campaigns to get their candidates elected.

They cloak themselves with innocuous names and engulf the state with ads telling you how to vote. Without, of course, telling you who they are or what they have to gain.

The response of Ducey, Secretary of State Michele Reagan and the Legislature has been not to crack down on dark money campaigns, but to actually pass a law to allow even more dark money spending in this state.

Enter the Outlaw Dirty Money campaign. This bipartisan group of former state attorneys general and others decided that if Arizona is to find out who is bankrolling campaigns, it’ll have to be the voters who do the unmasking.

Thus comes Outlaw Dirty Money, an initiative that would require any non-profit spending more than $10,000 on a political campaign to disclose all donors who contributed at least $2,500.

No longer could Arizona Public Service hide the millions it is believed to have spent to buy itself a pair of Corporation Commission seats in 2014. No longer could Ducey enjoy $5 million in dark-money support as he did in 2014.

If Outlaw Dirty Money makes the ballot, it’ll pass. But it’s not a given that it’ll make the ballot.

The group has until Thursday to collect 225,963 signatures. They’re aiming for 300,000 — no easy task when you don’t have big-money backers.

As of Monday, the campaign still needed 15,000 signatures. They’ll be working until the final fireworks fade tonight.

“What could be more patriotic than saving our democracy?” Outlaw Dirty Money Co-Chair Terry Goddard said on Tuesday. “We will have circulators fanned out across the state, covering as many July Fourth events as we can. They will be inside and outside all major celebrations, in the Valley and all over Arizona.”

If you’d like to help, email the campaign at info@outlawdirtymoney.com or call 602-633-5146. You can also go to outlawdirtymoney.com for locations to sign a petition.

Of course, it’ll be a Yankee Doodle disappointment if they don’t make it.

But God bless America, that they have the chance to try.