Careful, initiative tampering is dangerous

Futurewise — a prominent environmental group — and the Service Employees Local 775 have filed suit to knock Tim Eyman's Initiative 960 from the November ballot. The measure would make it more difficult for the Legislature to raise taxes and would compel public disclosure of their long-term costs, all of which these groups oppose.

That is their right. The Seattle Times may join them, but we believe their lawsuit should fail because it would undermine the rights of the people to petition their government. There is a contrary idea that initiatives are junk that somebody wrote on the back of a napkin. They may start that way, but all of them go to the Code Reviser's office, where they are put into legal language. The ballot title comes from the Attorney General's office, and is subject to challenge in court.

In addition, a few initiatives have been tossed off the ballot. In Seattle, the "Save the Creeks" initiative was thrown off the ballot in 2003 because it was a measure for the city to exempt itself from a state law. The only statewide example was an initiative years ago that tried to change the U.S. Constitution.

Courts said it was "beyond the scope" of the initiative power for a lower level of government to change a higher one. It was a neat phrase, and we thought it was correct. Now comes this case. It argues that Initiative 960 is "beyond the scope" of the initiative power because it violates the Constitution in other ways. Thus "beyond the scope" expands from a narrow set of voter initiatives — nutty ones, mainly — to potentially any one.

And that is an attempt to change our political system, in which courts don't decide whether a measure is constitutional until after the people approve it. It's a slow way, but it's our way, and it has the advantage of allowing the people to say what they want. That is how car tabs were lowered: the people voted to lower them, the court threw the measure out, and the Legislature lowered them anyway. The political message got through.

The Seattle Times did not support that initiative, and over the years we have expressed our dislike of many others. But we defend the right of initiative. The Futurewise-SEIU lawsuit would expand the power of political groups to shrink the people's choices before an election. We are against it.