Utah majority leaders say amendment needed so Utah doesn’t become California

The constitutional amendment giving the Utah Legislature the ability to amend ballot initiatives preserves the voice of the people and allows lawmakers to deliberate to make good policy, said Utah Senate President Stuart Adams and House Majority Leader Mike Schultz.

Lawmakers are holding a special session Wednesday — if two-thirds vote in favor of advancing the amendment, then it will appear on Utahns’ November ballots.

Schultz and Adams spoke to the Deseret News in separate interviews Tuesday ahead of the special session. They answered questions about why they think the amendment is important and responded to concerns related about the move.

“We’re going to make our best case to the voters,” said Schultz, adding one misconception he has seen is that lawmakers are trying to change the initiative process. “All we’re saying is we would like to take it back to the way it’s been for the last 130 years.”

What we are fighting for is Utahns having control over the process, said Adams. “We’re not trying to take away any of their rights or any of their abilities. The initiative process has not changed at all. We just want to make sure that we keep Utah, Utah.”

The constitutional amendment explained

The amendment would “restore and strengthen the longstanding practice that voters, the Legislature, and local bodies may amend or repeal legislation,” a press release announcing it said.

The Utah Constitution would explicitly give the legislature the ability to amend or veto laws passed by citizen initiatives.

The amendment would also extend the signature collection period for the referendum process — this is the process where Utah citizens can take an existing law and put it up for rejection or appeal. It would allot 20 more days to the process for gathering the requisite signatures (8% of active voters for statewide initiatives in 15 of the 29 state senate districts).

The change to the constitution would also prohibit foreign entities from contributing to ballot initiatives or referenda.

The conversation surrounding the amendment was kicked off by a letter from the Utah Republican Party and another letter from the Sutherland Institute. Both advocated for an amendment after language allowing a lawsuit on redistricting to move forward — the Utah Supreme Court said in the ruling that initiatives could be amended in limited circumstances. The Utah GOP letter was signed by many conservative groups, politicians and candidates for office.

Adams, R-Layton, said he has talked to lawmakers in other states about the foreign money they have seen come in to bolster support for initiatives. “One was Maine and they’ve had foreign money or foreign influences come in to try to influence their initiative process. And they’ve taken action to block that.”

“We want some more time to study that,” said Schultz, R-Hooper, explaining putting it into the Utah Constitution would be the first step. Lawmakers would then determine what options they have to prevent this kind of influence over time rather than rush the process.

The amendment has its critics.

Better Boundaries along with Mormon Women for Ethical Government, the chairs of the Utah Democratic Party and the United Utah Party signed a letter saying the amendment “would severely undermine the balance of power between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches that our founders wisely established.”

The group opened up the letter for signatures from everyday Utahns and more than 2,000 signed on.

Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, who is also the Democratic nominee for governor, said lawmakers were “rewriting the rules of the game.”

“This proposed state constitutional amendment is a blatant abuse of authority, and we must stand in firm opposition to it,” said King. “I will fight to protect the rights of Utahns and uphold freedom and liberty.”

Both Schultz and Adams said the amendment would preserve the voice of Utahns.

“This has given the citizens an opportunity to decide if they want the unelected justices to make that decision for them, or if they want to be able to make it for themselves,” said Schultz, adding he disagreed with the characterization of the effort a “power grab.”

“We just want to keep things the way it’s been for the last 130 years in the state of Utah and to show that we’re sincere in that we opened up the back end of that for referenda, making it easier for citizens of the state to hold the legislature accountable,” said Schultz.

Adams said he does not see the amendment as taking away the voice of the people or a power grab move because it does not change the initiative process or make it harder. He said sometimes initiatives need to be changed to comport with the constitution.

He gave the Better Boundaries initiative as an example.

“They came to us because when they drafted it, they had an unconstitutional provision in it,” said Adams, explaining the provision said if the House speaker and the Senate president did not appoint people to the commission, it would default to the Supreme Court.

That was considered an unconstitutional provision, said Adams, and Better Boundaries asked for changes.

“We actually made those changes, had a press conference in the Gold Room, and they needed it, or they would have lost their initiative on constitutional grounds,” Adams said.

This is the process of a democratic republic, he said. The Founding Fathers put elected representatives in place to be accountable to the people — they can be fired if they are not. They have the responsibility of expending effort to work hand-in-hand with constituents to find the best policy.

Sometimes amendments to bills are necessary to do that.

“When somebody says we’re taking away the right of the people, we’re taking their ideas and making them functional for them,” said Adams.

Why Adams and Schultz support the amendment

Both Adams and Schultz pointed toward the Utah Legislature’s history working with stakeholders after initiatives become law to make better policy. Schultz said the Legislature has left the core of initiatives remain in law and has only made amendments to reflect what the voters wanted.

Schultz said when voters passed the medical marijuana initiative, they were unaware recreational marijuana would be decriminalized, as that part was “buried” in the discussions.

“When it passed, lawmakers got together and worked with the groups, we were able to keep true medical marijuana,” said Schultz, adding those groups stood to benefit financially from removing penalties for recreational marijuana, but it was not best for Utah voters.

The marijuana initiative has been changed every legislative session since 2018, Adams said. “And it hasn’t just been Republicans changing it.” During the last session, the change was sponsored by two Democrats.

“We have changes every year that we have to make to our statute to make it fit,” he said, explaining there are consequences and new issues that emerge.

The core reasons Schultz and Adams expressed for amending the Utah Constitution were allowing Utah voters to keep their autonomy and preserving the state’s constitutional republic.

Schultz said he was concerned about the money that would come into the state even though Utah voters may not want it.

Pointing toward the Medicaid expansion, Schultz said the focus was on the actual expansion, but not the automatic increases that would have caused the state financial issues.

“When the voters passed that, the Legislature took some time. We worked through it very carefully and we left intact what the voters thought they were passing — the Medicaid expansion,” said Schultz. “But we took out all the special interest groups’ money that went to fund it.”

Schultz said he did not want Utah to become like California and be governed by initiatives that voters did not fully understand when they passed them.

“That’s why California has budget problems and all sorts of other problems,” he said.

Adams said initiatives in California were “not necessarily a grassroots effort,” explaining groups spend big money to gather signatures and do PR campaigns to sway voters.

If the amendment makes it onto the ballot, Schultz said Utahns should be proud of the process.

“This is something we should be proud of because ultimately it’s the voters, it’s the citizens of the state that get to make that decision.”

“We live in the greatest state in the nation,” said Adams, listing off several metrics that offer evidence of that ranging from Utah’s management to economy to the rate of happiness.

“We don’t want it to be California with initiatives and out-of-state money and out-of-state influences determining policies that affect the citizens of Utah,” said Adams. “That’s what we’re fighting for.”

Not the end of the conversation

The amendment is not the end of the conversation, said Schultz. “I think we’re even going to broaden it out a little bit.”

Schultz expressed openness to having a conversation on changing Utah’s process of judicial appointments — from appointments to elections.

“If our judges are going to have this big of consequences on the policy of the state, maybe they ought to be held accountable to the voters as well,” he said, adding he wanted the voice of the people to be more representative of the people.

“Perhaps the people ought to have some say on what decisions their judges are making,” said Adams. He said it might be a better process.

Schultz said lawmakers would go through a process and look into the issue, adding he did not know if electing judges was the right answer. But over the next one to two years, they would consider it.