Legislature: “Citizens, Shut Up”
Ben Winslow and Fox 13 News reports that the Utah Legislature is threatening to amend the process by which citizens make their own laws.
This is theft.
Through our Utah Constitution, the People gave the Legislature some lawmaking authority, and—this is the important part—the People kept an equal amount of lawmaking authority. The People exercise their authority through the initiative process. Utah makes laws through representative democracy (the Legislature) and direct democracy (the Initiative process). By making the initiative process more difficult, the Legislature upsets the balance of power created by the Utah Constitution. The Legislature aggrandizes itself and diminishes the People.
A quick review of the numbers in 2018: Utah legislators proposed 830 possible laws and resolutions; the People proposed 3 laws.
Remember that score. 830 to 3. That is 99.64% to 00.36%. Apparently, the Legislature thinks that stirring is an uprising that must be suppressed.
The People directly passed the .36% of laws that citizens proposed: Prop 2 (medical cannabis), Prop 3 (Medicaid expansion), and Prop 4 (redistricting requirements). The Legislature immediately gutted Prop 2 (medical cannabis). It threatens the other 2 initiatives passed by the People. Now, more fundamentally, it threatens the very process by which citizens can exercise their constitutional power to create laws. The citizens’ answer must be loud and clear: NO!
I propose a resolution for the Legislature. Currently, at the front of the Utah House of Representatives the words “Vox Populi” are written in gold. Voice of the People. Every legislator lauds the noble idea and talks about it to constituents. However, while they work to take away the People’s voice, while they work to silence the People because of the .36% of the laws that they dared propose in 2018, our legislative betters should replace those noble Latin words with the more honest “Silentio Populi.” People Shut Up.