Last weekend on “The Score” radio show, my colleague Scott Lee interviewed Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge, a group dedicated to “…protecting and expanding the initiative and referendum process.” Paul made an impassioned case for initiative and referendum, but also noted that Virginia, the cradle on American political thought, lacks the process almost entirely. How could this possibly be?
There’s no easy place to look for an answer. Virginia does hold regular statewide referendums on constitutional amendments, bond debt and the like. But all those matters come from the General Assembly and even then only after a very long and laborious process.
The last time a statewide candidate pushed for ballot referenda on issues other than amendments or debt was during the 2005 gubernatorial contest between Jerry Kilgore and Tim Kaine. Kilgore floated the idea of putting proposed tax hikes before the voters for approval – a variation on an idea House Speaker Bill Howell and others broached in 2004 when then-Gov. Mark Warner was muscling a tax increase through the General Assembly.
Then-Lt. Gov. Kaine likened proponents of the move as modern versions of Pontius Pilate. Kaine and others felt far differently about tax referenda back in 2002, when Gov. Warner was cheering for two regional measures that would have raised taxes to pay for transportation projects. Both were soundly defeated.
The idea of tax referenda, let alone statewide initiatives, has disappeared from Virginia political discussions since those days. That may be changing – though not for the good.
Over at Bearing Drift, my friend Shaun Kenney has a piece wherein he heartily seconds a proposal from Dels. Dave Albo and Tim Hugo that would allow local boards of supervisors to get rid of their elected school boards and replace them with appointed members. This was the old Virginia method for controlling schools, and, being Virginia, the old ways are often looked on with a fondness they do not deserve. In the case of elected school boards, the General Assembly gave people the power to choose the elected board method via referendum back in the 1990s. Many localities have done so.
But the Albo-Hugo approach would bypass the referendum process and leave the matter in the hands of boards of supervisors. To call this high-handed isn’t quite fair, as high-handedness implies at least a degree of thought.
If Messrs. Hugo and Albo dislike elected school boards, they can, as citizens, being circulating petitions in their county (Fairfax) to return to an appointed system. It will take time and a lot of shoe leather, but if they gather the necessary signatures, their question will go on the ballot for the people to decide.
Perhaps their crusade will catch on elsewhere and Virginia’s dalliance with elected school boards will come to an end. But if so, let it come to an end at the hands of the people – who chose the elected boards to begin with.
And then, let’s all sit down and talk about giving Virginia an initiative process, so they can craft and vote on laws directly. I’ll wager the first petition circulated would be for term limits.
