By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services/East Valley Tribune
A Scottsdale legislator figures you might have second thoughts about buying something if you knew all sales are final and it could not be returned.
Now Rep. Michelle Ugenti wants to extend that kind of warning to the measures that Arizonans are asked to approve at the ballot every two years. Her legislation would require every ballot measure to contain a warning that it cannot be repealed by the Legislature once approved, even if it turns out to be an unholy mess.
Ugenti, a Republican, said voters are generally unaware of a 1998 constitutional amendment. It precludes lawmakers from rescinding or even altering anything which had been approved at the ballot.
The only exception is if for an alternation that “furthers the purpose’’ of the original measure. And even that takes a three-fourths vote of both the House and Senate.
“A lot of people do not realize that the propositions that are passed on ballots cannot be changed,’’ she said, unless they meet both the vote and purpose requirements. And she said those hurdles to amending ballot measure are so significant that “you really can’t change them.’’
Constitutional changes always have had to be approved by voters.
But much of what voters approve is statutory, ranging from expanding the state’s Medicaid program to everyone below the federal poverty level to the 2010 medical marijuana law. And it used to be that lawmakers were free to alter voter-approved changes in state law.
The current restriction traces its roots to 1996 when voters approved Arizona’s first law allowing doctors to prescribe that drug and others which are otherwise illegal to their patients.
The following year, though, lawmakers voted to override that measure, adding a provision which made prescription of any drug subject to federal approval. That effectively negated the law.
Anti-drug group backed by Cardinals wants to repeal Arizona’s medical marijuana law
