Referendum process targeted Financing, signature gathering top issues

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In 1977, they were called the Freedom Fighters.

Named for the Waldo County town in which they met, the group of volunteers – led by tax reformer Mary Adams – collected enough signatures to force a vote on whether to repeal the state property tax.

“Life was simpler back then,” said Adams, whose current petition drive – an effort to limit state spending through a so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights – awaits the Secretary of State’s final blessing before it can appear on the November 2006 ballot.

Indeed, there have been many changes in state elections law in the nearly 30 years since Adams’ first victory at the polls. The popular citizen initiative process could be in line for even more reforms based on the recommendations of a special commission set to release its report in early December.

The commission’s report, which will be sent to state elections officials for review, is expected to call for additional financial disclosures from campaigns pushing the initiatives. It also recommends easier public access – via the Internet – to the identities of those footing the bills of the increasingly expensive campaigns.

“I’d like it to be a citizen process and an open process,” said Rep. Sean Faircloth, D-Bangor, the House chairman of the Commission to Study Alternative Voting Procedures, the Citizen Initiative Process and Minor Party Ballot Access. “Unfortunately, through methods that are totally legal, it’s becoming less of a citizen process.”

Truth be told, Adams doesn’t think much of Faircloth or his continuing efforts to reform the system. One of Faircloth’s most recent reforms – passed by the Legislature earlier this year – requires petition circulators to offer voters a summary of the initiative and provide the state’s estimated cost – roughly $95,000 in 2004 – of putting a single question on the ballot.

“Bless his heart, he is clearly someone who has never done a petition drive,” said Adams of Garland, who called those changes – which will apply to all future citizen-initiated efforts – “just more sandbags for the petitioner to carry.”

But Faircloth contends his reforms – as well as those recommended by the commission – will improve public understanding of the process, which he says has been tainted in recent years by big money from out-of-state interests and an increasing reliance on paid signature gatherers.

“There’s a perception that’s been somewhat deceptively created that these petitions are out there because, gosh, we citizens believe in this cause. That’s not necessarily the case, and the public should look at that,” said Faircloth, whose commission will also recommend that campaigns be required to itemize how much money they spend on collecting signatures.

In 1977, that rule would not have applied to Adams’ effort to repeal the state property tax. For one, there were no campaign finance reporting requirements. Secondly, Adams’ signature gathering effort was strictly volunteer.

Times change, however, and Adams almost apologetically acknowledges that her most recent effort – out of necessity, she said – did enlist paid signature gatherers in its final weeks.

“I’ve always said I wanted to keep it all volunteer, but this year, I found it impossible,” said Adams, whose political action committee spent roughly $25,000 to gather the last 9,000-plus signatures needed to meet the minimum state requirement.

That amount pales in comparison to estimates from backers of a tribal racetrack casino in Washington County. They plan on spending upward of $200,000 to gather the needed 50,519 signatures before the fast-approaching Jan. 30 deadline to make the November 2006 ballot.

For help in that regard, the Passamaquoddy Tribe has enlisted National Voter Outreach, a Carson City, Nev., firm that helped gather signatures in the citizen-led effort to impose congressional term limits in Maine in 1994.

If the tribe is successful in forcing a 2006 vote, its racetrack casino proposal could be alongside Adams’ tax plan and a third citizen initiated effort to tax water extracted from Maine aquifers. Backers of the water tax plan submitted about 51,000 signatures – about 500 more than needed – to state elections officials in late September.

The Secretary of State’s Office must still validate the signatures on those two petitions in line for the November 2006 ballot. It has until March 1 to do so.

Three citizen-initiated questions on one ballot is not as unusual as it once was. Use of the petition process has increased markedly since the first such referendum in 1911, when voters approved a plan to nominate state and county officers through primary elections.

The 2005 effort to repeal the state’s gay rights law was the 46th citizen-initiated question to appear on a Maine ballot. Thirty two of those questions – or roughly 70 percent – have come since 1980, when voters rejected a prohibition of nuclear power and approved a ban on slot machines.

Voters may again consider a ban on slots if George Rodrigues has his druthers.

The Westbrook man heads a group called No Slots for ME!, which last month fell about 15,000 signatures short in its effort to make the 2006 ballot.

“It wasn’t easy for us,” said Rodrigues, who blamed part of his group’s failure on an increase in absentee voting in 2004. The increase, he explained, limited the number of voters his petitioners met at the November polls, where his group had hoped to gather most of its signatures.

Roughly 22 percent of Mainers voted absentee in 2004, doubling the total from 2000, the first year when Mainers didn’t need a specific reason to vote early.

In the town of York – in the heart of southern Maine opposition to gambling proposals – more than 3,000 people voted early in 2004.

“There’s 3,000 people who didn’t sign our petitions,” Rodrigues said.

Lessons learned, Rodrigues’ group has resurrected itself with a new steering committee and is eyeing a 2007 vote, but perhaps only if the Passamaquoddy Tribe is successful in bringing its casino plan before voters, he said.

The tribe’s proposed expansion of slots, Rodrigues said, could be needed to rally opposition to the state’s newest form of gambling, which has thus far been limited to Bangor.

“I hate to say it, but we haven’t seen a lot of passion for [a repeal try] right now,” he said.

Passion was a major factor in Mary Adams’ return to the sometimes trying political process, which virtually consumed the last year of her life, she said.

“The only people who say it’s easy are the people who haven’t done it,” she said. “It’s rough.”