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Opinion
Apr. 24, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Undoing the will of the people

Lawmakers should be wary of meddling with voter-approved laws

The same lawmakers who praise the people's collective wisdom when they're angling for our votes in November squawk that their plenary power to decide what's good for us is being compromised, that their "hands are being tied," if citizens go to the enormous trouble and expense of changing their own laws by writing an initiative and placing it on the ballot.

Near the end of the movie "The Godfather," Abe Vigoda, playing the treacherous caporegime Tessio, complains that young Michael Corleone's refusal to drive to the mob summit meeting (where Tessio plans to have him killed) in the assigned car "is messing up all my arrangements."

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    • The phrase comes back to us every time we imagine the lobbyists for big industries, for the public employee unions -- whoever -- pulling their hair over the citizens taking matters into their own hands.

    "All me beautiful bribes ... ruined! They're messing up all my arrangements!"

    Lawmakers keep trying to make it harder to qualify initiative questions for the ballots. And now, lawmakers in Carson City -- without bothering to spend millions of dollars passing petitions and getting their changes on the ballot, as common citizens were required to do -- are meddling with laws enacted by the citizenry.

    It's tempting to pick and choose which of these changes to embrace and which to oppose. But making a call based on the desired outcome, rather than on some consistent principle, is the kind of precedent that can easily come back to bite.

    A few years back, voters set a cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases, hoping to bring down the costs of malpractice insurance and thus keep Nevada's best doctors from fleeing the jurisdiction. Using disingenuous arguments that those infected with hepatitis in the recent colonoscopy scandals won't be fully compensated (in fact, compensation for provable economic damages was never capped), the lawmakers now propose to eliminate those caps, a transparent favor to trial lawyers who use "pain and suffering" awards to jack up their take.

    Because the result is bad, lambasting the lawmakers for meddling too casually with a voter-enacted law is an easy call, in this case.

    Ditto recurrent efforts to roll back or stymie term limits. Leave them alone, ladies and gentlemen, unless you want to see voters forced to contemplate the kind of "term limits" applied in Paris in the 1790s.

    On the other hand, the anti-smoking law enacted by Nevada voters three years ago was deeply flawed, sold on false premises and constitutes a massive affront to private property rights. It has killed many jobs.

    Now the Legislature appears to be heeding the cries of the tavern owners and is prepared to relax the voter-enacted law. Even though we prefer the likely outcome of this meddling with the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act, it sets just as dangerous a precedent as the meddling with voter-approved caps on "pain and suffering" awards.

    Lawmakers should take heed of the trouble voters already took to bypass an intransigent Legislature and show considerably more respect for the will of their constituents.

    Yes, technically such laws can be adjusted after two years have passed. But voter-enacted measures should be "adjusted" by legislative fiat only when they're fatally unclear, or when changed circumstances render them impossible to live with.

    Otherwise, lawmakers who wish the citizenry to reconsider a law birthed by initiative should have the courtesy to put their repeal or amendment on the ballot and campaign for passage in the same manner as the lowly peons who had to labor to get it enacted in the first place.

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    SecretSpook wrote on April 24, 2009 09:10 PM: Brian, prove it DOES cause cancer. You can't because there is NO proof one way or the other. There are no death certificates with second-hand smoke as the cause of death. Estimated figures are the southern output of a north-facing bull. They had to estimate because there is no definitive proof. They're assuming but show me the study and I'll show you the hundreds of other environmental conditions that COULD have caused those deaths.


    John F wrote on April 24, 2009 08:35 PM: How is it that our elected representatives, acting within their Constitutional purview, are not representing the will of the people? We elected them, did we not?

    If you don't want the legislature to be able to override laws passed through the initiative process, let's have another initiative to take away their power to do so.


    Steve wrote on April 24, 2009 07:19 PM: "Any business that welcomes and encourages the general public to enter is not a private business."

    That has to be one of the most ignorant comments I've ever read.


    Brian wrote on April 24, 2009 05:43 PM: Cough,

    Please explain if smoking causes cancer, how when it is exhaled it doesn't cause cancer anymore.


    endrun wrote on April 24, 2009 04:57 PM: 'without bothering to spend millions of dollars passing petitions and getting their changes on the ballot, as common citizens were required to do -- are meddling with laws enacted by the citizenry.'

    ...and who doesn't ensure the people of Nevada priority on quality education for their children

    ...and who always ensure pay raises for themselves?

    Get a grip folks these people are corrupt.


    endrun wrote on April 24, 2009 04:51 PM: Everyone is making a huge issue about the smoking ban, when we have a much more serious problem here in Nevada.

    The fact that this isn't the first time Nevada legislators threw a majority vote out the window.

    The fact that they disregard the will of the people except when it comes election time is serious.

    This matter wouldn't be an issue if our elected officials cared what voters think.

    What we need to be talking about is putting an end to this type of public service and get rid of these crooks.

    Again..this isn't the only time they have thrown Nevada voters under the bus.


    cough wrote on April 24, 2009 04:28 PM: "The estimated figure that is arrived is based on the midpoint number of..other types of...deaths"

    You call that science?

    20 years of research and they still can't prove that which can't be proven...imagine that. Other scientists can come to conclusions that second-hand smoke does NOT cause cancer in a much shorter time frame. I wonder how much money the CDC has made during the past 20 years "researching" this.


    Brian wrote on April 24, 2009 04:14 PM: According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), over 54,000 people die annually in the US alone, from secondhand smoke exposure. The estimated figure that is arrived is based on the midpoint number of deaths from heart diseases (49,000), SIDS deaths (2,300), and lung cancer deaths (3,200). Children are at considerable risk to many severe and chronic diseases due to secondhand smoke exposure.

    Second hand smoke refers to smoke that is exhaled by a smoker and the smoke that is released by a burning tobacco product. Secondhand smoke contains more than 4000 chemicals compounds, most of which are carcinogenic or toxic. The research conducted over the past 20 years has led experts to believe that second smoke can cause damage to organs, and also death.


    Kevin wrote on April 24, 2009 02:18 PM: Hey Marcus; I read these posts everyday, and today is my first day to respond to you and all others. You have no clue what is in your food or what was wiped on your plate during meal time at the restaurant i work and its smoke free. Adios Amigo Boun Appetit.


    Jeri wrote on April 24, 2009 12:02 PM: The anti-smoking referendum was a mandate not a choice proposed by the anti-smoking lobbyists; a ruse played upon voters since the referendum did not offer voters’ a choice between smoking prohibitions and non smoking prohibitions but rather a choice between the degree of proposed prohibitions, a passage of law by mere issuance of referendum which should have been prohibited on to its self.


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