It’s difficult to fathom how someone could come up with a manifesto any more likely to wreak economic havoc or to ignite a litigious firestorm than the Envision Spokane group’s so-called Community Bill of Rights, which will be on the Nov. 3 ballot.
We urge voters to reject the measure. What’s important right now, though, with about 2 1/2 months before the Spokane County elections office begins sending out vote-by-mail ballots, is for opponents to mount an organized, well-funded campaign to educate unsuspecting voters about the sweeping damage this pseudo feel-good proposal would cause.
On its face, the initiative seeks to create an alluring utopian world by amending the city charter to grant residents the right to a locally-based economy, affordable preventive health care, affordable and safe housing, affordable and renewable energy, and enhanced neighborhood and workplace rights. In one of its 10 proposed charter amendments, it even seeks to grant the natural environment the right to exist and flourish.
Alas, we don’t live in a world that lends itself to utopian solutions. What this wildly misguided measure actually would create is civic paralysis and business stagnation, by giving residents, workers, neighborhoods, and neighborhood councils, along with the city of Spokane, the right to enforce it.
It would impose huge additional regulatory responsibilities and costs on the city, the initiative proponents’ denial of that notwithstanding, at a time when the city already is struggling to cope with big budget shortfalls, and would encourage frivolous lawsuits. Furthermore, it would undermine powers vested in elected city officials, essentially transferring to small groups of self-appointed neighborhood activists the ability to veto development projects, while requiring the city to defend their actions legally.
Envision Spokane provides no guidance on who it believes should deliver the various mandated services, how the rights should be enforced, or how much it believes that enforcement effort would cost, preferring apparently to leave the devilish details to others.
Despite those seemingly fatal shortcomings, the initiative has the potential to gain traction with voters still seething at the corporate misconduct that helped plunge the U.S. into its worst recession in decades and who might see this as a way of striking back. For that reason, opponents who underestimate the measure’s chances of success at the polls, and who don’t attack it with fervor, do so at their own peril.
On the bright side, if voters approve the initiative, there appears to be a good chance the courts will toss it out, anyway, for violating city charter and state constitutional language requiring that initiatives deal with single subjects. In a letter to City Council members, Rich Hadley, president and CEO of Greater Spokane Incorporated, described the ballot measure as akin to forcing major policy issues through a fire hose, because of the numerous subjects it seeks to address.
It would have been nice to see the council block the initiative from proceeding to the ballot on that basis, despite warnings by Envision Spokane that doing so would invite a lawsuit. Its 5-2 vote to send the matter on to voters was understandable, though, based on the likelihood the courts wouldn’t be willing to rule on the bill’s legal merits until after the election.
Kai Huschke, Envision Spokane’s campaign director, contends the initiative “is not about stopping development at all,” but rather is about creating more equity, including by giving neighborhoods greater say in what goes on around them. “Until you have the ability to make a legal claim,” he asserts, “you’re never going to change the inequity.”
Through normal local democratic processes, residents always have the ability to bring about positive change and cure inequities. By foisting on the public this unrealistic assemblage of vaguely worded new “rights,” Envision Spokane seeks to render those processes moot, without any regard for the Pandora’s box of legal and financial chaos its initiative would open.
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