Last-minute citizen initiative changes are a stab in the back

House Bill 5 is why people hate government.

At the last minute of the legislative session, Republican lawmakers crafted a regulatory spiderweb designed to make it as hard as possible to collect and submit signatures so citizens can propose changes to the Florida Constitution.

The party of less regulation for business is the party of more regulation for citizens attempting to exercise self-government.

Gov. Ron DeSantis demonstrated with his veto of the plastic straw-ban bill that he’s willing to challenge his own party’s bad judgment. By vetoing HB 5, he has a chance to stand on principle against dirty tricks that subvert the legislative process and the state constitution. It wouldn’t hurt his populist bona fides either.

DeSantis has signaled in the past his unhappiness with citizen initiatives, and he praised this bill after it was passed by the Legislature. If the governor objectively evaluates the bill, he would recognize it’s not the way to bring about change.

This whole mess is the product of a Legislature and special interests terrified by some of the current citizen-led attempts to change the constitution.

One would raise the minimum wage. One would let everyone vote in primary elections, including independents. One would require that an amendment pass two votes before the constitution is changed. One would ban assault weapons.

In all, the state is tracking more than 25 amendments. Many won’t make it on the ballot, and the ones that do have to get 60 percent of the vote, an already high bar. But the Legislature isn’t taking any chances.

So here’s what they did: Under HB 5, county elections offices that now have nothing to do with petition gathering — except to verify that the signatures on petitions belong to registered voters — are basically placed in charge of printing, distributing and tracking petitions.

Not only that, the petitions would have to be marked to identify the person gathering signatures. The elections offices would then have to report to the state how many petitions each gatherer has and how many were returned.

Try to imagine a county elections office being forced to print, keep on hand and account for thousands of petitions covering more than two dozen active initiatives.

As one elections supervisor put it, “Why should I be their print shop?”

Great question. Here’s another: Who’s going to pay for all the material and labor required to turn 67 elections offices into petition print shops? That’s easy — you are, with your taxes.

There’s more. Petition gatherers have 30 days from the time a form is signed to turn it in to the elections office. A $50-per-day-per-form fine is the consequence for tardiness.

The bill also creates a system for petition gatherers to register with the state (more bureaucracy) and it becomes a firstdegree misdemeanor to pay those gatherers on a per-signature basis, belying the conservative doctrine that people who work hard should be compensated accordingly.

These new citizen-initiative provisions were all but dead before getting pasted — at the last minute — into a different bill on the last full day of the Legislature’s session. Surely the governor can recognize that’s no way to conduct the public’s business.

What makes this all the worse are the justifications provided by lawmakers.

One is to prevent fraud, though they offer no evidence that petition fraud is taking place in Florida, or that it’s imminent. This isn’t about the fear of petition fraud. It’s about lawmakers attempting to weaken the power of people to change the constitution.

Another argument — that special interests have taken over the amendment process — is particularly rich considering the sway special interests hold over the Legislature.

Finally, lawmakers say the people shouldn’t possess such power over the constitution in the first place.

“A direct democracy is for other places — not namely the United States or the state of Florida,” said state Rep. James Grant of Tampa, a key backer of this bad bill.

Inconveniently for Grant, he swore in the oath of office to uphold the Florida Constitution, which endows citizens with the power to amend the constitution.

If Grant and his fellow Republicans don’t like citizens getting involved in changing the constitution, they should propose an amendment simply doing away with that mechanism instead of trying to weaken it through last-minute legislative mischief and phony arguments. Let voters decide once and for all.

At least that would be honest.