Other initiatives aiming to qualify target energy, taxes and ‘dark money’
Arizona voters could see crowded ballots this fall as hundreds of thousands of signatures for a handful of complex initiatives were submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office by Thursday’s 5 p.m. deadline.
To place an initiative on the ballot, supporters must submit a hefty number of valid voter signatures supporting the measure: 150,642 for initiative measures or 225,963 for constitutional amendments.
Several campaigns turned in boxes of petition sheets Thursday, though the signatures still need to be verified and could face challenges from opponents.
Among those that were filed by the Thursday deadline are initiatives to:
❚ Require electric companies to get half of their power from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2030.
❚ Prohibit campaign contributions from anonymous sources.
Prevent taxes on services.
❚ Raise personal income taxes on high-wage earners to fund education.
The Secretary of State’s Office has 20 business days to process the petitions, though state Elections Director Eric Spencer said they will be done before that. First, staff members remove staples from all of the pages, and then sheets are scanned into the office’s new digital system and made available online “for the whole world to begin reviewing,” Spencer said.
Counties then have 15 business days to verify voter signatures, after which the Secretary of State’s Office has a final three days to determine if the initiative has qualified for the ballot.
Spencer said he thinks “the monstrous amount” of signatures submitted this year — particularly the 480,000 for clean energy and 406,000 for service taxes — “has got to be nearing a record.”
In 2016, two initiatives made the ballot: a proposition to legalize recreational marijuana, and a proposition to gradually increase the minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2020 and require paid sick time. The marijuana initiative was defeated and the minimumwage proposal passed.
Clean-energy push endures heavy opposition
Backers of an initiative to require electric companies to get half of their electricity from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, turned in a reported 480,464 signatures Thursday morning. The committee held a press conference outside the Capitol on Thursday to celebrate its accomplishment.
In the committee’s press release, backers of the Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona initiative boasted turning in more signatures than any other ballot campaign: “more than double” the nearly 226,000 required of them.
“Today is another sunny day in Arizona,” said campaign co-chair Alejandra Gomez in the official statement. “It’s another good day to talk about how renewable energy can help us save money and reduce pollution. Arizonans are sending a clear message that we have a right to clean air and water and a moral responsibility to leave our children and their children a safer, healthier future.”
The initiative has been heavily opposed by officials from the state’s biggest utility, Arizona Public Service Co.
The company said that if forced to boost renewable energy as much as would be required by 2030, it would not only force the early closure of its coal plants in Joseph City and near Farmington, New Mexico, but also would shut down the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station about 50 miles west of Phoenix.
The nuclear plant is the largest power producer of any kind in the country.
The opposition campaign challenged the people gathering signatures for the clean-energy measure as much as the measure itself. Opponents ran background checks on hundreds of paid signature gatherers and found 44 people who had criminal convictions, a violation of state law.
Any signatures collected by such workers would be invalid.
The opposition group then took out advertisements and placed robocalls, warning voters not to sign the clean-energy measure because they could be handing personal information to criminals.
The APS-backed opponents also have criticized the measure for being backed by California billionaire Tom Steyer and for its potential to increase electric bills.
“Amending the Arizona Constitution is serious business,” said Matthew Benson, a spokesman for the opposition campaign. “This is why policy makers have intentionally — and rightly — set the highest of bars before any constitutional amendment can be brought before Arizona voters. That vigorous review process begins now.”
Tracking political donations
The Outlaw Dirty Money constitutional amendment seeks to make public the identity of all major campaign contributors. The committee submitted 285,768 signatures.
The initiative would require anyone spending more than $10,000 to oppose or support candidates or ballot measures to disclose everyone who contributed $2,500 or more to the effort. Violators would be subject to fines.
The initiative’s main proponent is Terry Goddard, a Democrat who formerly served as Arizona’s attorney general.
“There is no lack of evidence,” Goddard said. “Arizona is ground zero for dirty money. We are the state that has been chosen by these anonymous folks to be their testing ground. They have come to Arizona with more money and more total impact than in any other state in the country.”
The “dark money” initiative has a much smaller margin for potentially invalid signatures.
Backers submitted just under 60,000 more signa-
In 2016, two initiatives made the ballot: a proposition to legalize recreational marijuana, and a proposition to gradually increase the minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2020 and require paid sick time. The marijuana initiative was defeated and the minimum-wage proposal passed.
tures than needed to make the ballot. The clean-energy and service-tax measures, on the other hand, collected nearly 255,000 and 180,000 more signatures than required.
No new taxes on services
Officials with the group Citizens for Fair Tax Policy filed what they said are 406,353 signatures for their initiative. This was the first of the submitted measures, filed on Tuesday, two days before the official deadline.
If it makes it to the ballot unchallenged and is approved by voters, the constitutional amendment will prohibit any municipality or the state from imposing or increasing any service-based tax that was not in effect as of Dec. 31, 2017.
The group pushing the measure, Citizens for Fair Tax Policy, is funded by the Arizona Association of Realtors. But supporters are concerned that lawmakers could affect a variety of services, not just their own industry.
“At this time, we don’t have a professional service tax; however, it has been something that has been circulated as a revenue generator,” said Sedona real estate agent Holly Mabery, who is chairing the group. She also has served as president of the Association of Realtors and serves on the board today.
She said in the few states that have passed such a tax, consumers have seen costs increase and small businesses have suffered because they face increased reporting requirements.
“We feel it will create economic stability going forward,” she said. “Businesses know what they have got and they can invest.”
She said if voters approve the measure in November, it would protect them from seeing any future taxes on medical care, car repairs, home repairs, veterinarian services and other essential services.
Spencer, the elections director, posted on Twitter that his staff was hard at work on the Fourth of July holiday to prepare these signature sheets for review.
Empowerment scholarships already qualified
One measure had already qualified for the ballot: Voters are set to decide whether to enact Gov. Doug Ducey’s school-voucher-expansion measure approved by the Legislature in 2017.
The expansion seeks to make all Arizona students eligible to apply for a program to grant tax dollars to parents for private-school tuition or other education expenses. It faced immediate opposition from people who said it would take tax dollars away from already challenged public schools.
The measure was put on hold last August after opponents turned in enough signatures to put the measure to a vote. Unlike the ballot initiatives, this is a vote on already-passed legislation, rather than an effort to pass new legislation.
Marijuana legalization and decriminalization
Despite a three-day, last-ditch effort to rally support, the Safer Arizona Cannabis Legalization Act did not obtain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
David Wisniewski, chairman of the effort, said Thursday that the group gathered about 70,000 signatures.