No. 3: New changes to petition formats; pay hike bid sneaks in

The third and final Issue — No. 3 coming from the Arkansas General Assembly to Arkansas voters Nov. 3 is a “Jekyll and Hyde” type question.

Parts of it look, oh, so good. Other parts show the “dark side,” as in raising the Arkansas executive officers’ pay.

Issue No. 3 is a complex and different question. One that must be evaluated, read and studied —prior to voting on — before Nov. 3.

The title of the issue is: “An Amendment to the Arkansas Constitution to amend the process for the submission, challenge, and approval of proposed initiated acts, Constitutional Amendments and Referenda.”

The executive pay clause is a complex and puzzling aspect of this question not found in the title.

The State Legislature (35 Senators and 100 House members) seem happy with the Independent Commission setting the state’s salaries. Some judges grumble, but nary a peep has come from the seven Constitutional officers.

No Constitutional officer has spoken out on the pay rates — save Lt. Governor Tim Griffin.

Griffin wants us all to believe he doesn’t want a salary for his parttime position. But there must be some great “unsaid unrest” about executive officer pay by others.

But back to the bulk of Issue No. 3.

The changes in the petition gathering and procedures for all future Constitutional Amendments, Initiated Acts and Referendums, all brought by petition drives, at first blush, seems to take away the issues of ballot titles, validity of cause and relevancy from local City Clerks, County Clerks and even the Secretary of State.

The final say of good or bad, must come from entirely on the courts system.

The only real safeguard to having the courts at any level — especially the State Supreme Court — is a much earlier calendar deadline of April 15 to either approve or disapprove of these issues before the November balloting.

In the last several election cycles, some ballot issues had gathered signatures, met the first of many hurdles of a challenge of its title by various officials such as city clerks, county clerks and yes, even the Secretary of State, and even the sufficiency or insufficiency of its substance – only to have the Arkansas State Supreme Court — often in the final days from the actual election — rejecting the entire ballot issue.

People have talked about the issue for months, it has been printed on the ballot for voters to decide only to have the courts reject the issue and negate the vote of the public.

Such last minute actions cause hot-headed State Senators to call publicly “for impeachment” of justices and threats of withholding court operating finances.

It has become, recently, a very sorry state of affairs to try to amend the Constitution.

But Issue No. 3, for its merits, sets an early deadline. There would be, in theory, no more last minute ballot strikes from the Arkansas State Supreme Court.

The number of signatures to gain ballot access would rise significantly by this Issue. Also the number of votes for future Constitutional Amendments from the Legislature to referred issues to the people would increase.

Now it is a simple majority of only 51 in the House of Representatives for approval, the new requirement would be threefifths or 60 House members, for approval.

Subsequently, the same threefifths majority of members in the State Senate would require 21 Senators, rather than a simple majority of 18 to approve a new ballot issue to go forward.

Also the bill allows the Legislature to ask for changes to executive officer pay.

This proposed issue only applies to the salaries of the Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State, Auditor of State, Land Commission and Treasurer.

No members of the legislature or the state’s judges would be included.

Isn’t the Independent Commission on public official salaries doing enough for the Constitutional Officers?