An Orange County panel

approves changes to the citizen petition process, a move that critics say will make it harder to get petitions on the ballot.

Orange County voters will be asked in November to impose sweeping changes to the charter’s citizen petition process, and critics say the proposed amendments will make it more difficult for citizens to rewrite the laws that govern them.

The Charter Review Commission, a board appointed by Orange County commissioners, unanimously approved the series of recommended changes Thursday night with the charter group’s chairman saying the measures will add clarity.

The revamped process would require a petition drive to collect more signatures, pass a legal review by a panel of lawyers and add an independent financial impact statement spelling out the potential cost of the proposed change.

“All of these processes have the potential to kill a petition drive,” said Michele Levy, copresident of the Orange County League of Women Voters, which promotes voting rights. “What these changes will do is effec- tively make it impossible to get a petition on the ballot.”

But the measures were lauded by business and tourism leaders who fought a petition initiative in 2012 that would have mandated Orange County employers to provide workers with sick-time benefits, an issue they said was pushed by “outsiders.”

The changes are necessary and were prompted by “the widespread recognition that, in recent years, the integrity and very fabric of our Orange County charter has come under assault from special interest groups in an effort to hijack [the process] for their own political objectives and extreme agendas,” said Michael Ketchum, vice president of the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The proposals would apply only to measures placed on the ballot by citizen groups, not the county commission.

Charter commission’s chairman, Kevin Shaughnessy, said, “This is not a partisan issue. … it’s an issue of fairness, consistency, integrity and transparency.”.