Opinion ID: 1378445
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: municipal referendum powers

Text: Roseburg also contends that the authority of the city to allow its voters to arbitrate unresolved labor disputes immunizes the process from state regulation because it is an exercise of referendum powers reserved to the voters of local government under Article IV, section 1(5), supra. The framework for examination of this contention was also set in LaGrande/Astoria and, particularly, in our opinion on rehearing. There, we clarified that the amendments granted charter authority ( i.e., organic legislation, whether by charter or ordinance) to municipalities and withdrew it from the legislature. They also empowered municipalities to legislate by vote of the people. We explained:    Together, the 1906 amendments provide two grants of power and one limitation of power. Article XI, section 2, grants power to the voters of every city or town to enact and amend their municipal charter. It withdraws power from the Legislative Assembly to enact, amend, or repeal such charters. Article IV, section 1(5), empowers local voters to initiate or to refer to popular vote `all local, special and municipal legislation.' It deserves to be reemphasized that the terms of the granted powers and of the accompanying limitation need not be and are not symmetrical. Much of the argument against these statutes has proceeded as though a constitutional grant of power to one level of government necessarily carries with it a corresponding withdrawal of power from the other. That this is not so has long been a truism with respect to the relationship between the powers of Congress and the states, and it is equally true of `home rule' within a state. It is entirely possible to grant certain powers to local governments to act on their own initiative without at the same time limiting the powers of the state legislature. Indeed, as a practical matter this is essential if local government is to have any authority to legislate on its own in matters in which the state could also act, for otherwise local powers would have to be narrowly confined in order to save room for potential state legislation. The fact that the 1906 amendments gave municipal voters direct constitutional power to `enact and amend their municipal charter' and to use the initiative and referendum for `all local, special and municipal legislation' was a great achievement for home rule even though these two clauses did not of themselves take anything from the plenary legislative power of the state, for before 1906 these local powers had to be obtained from the Legislative Assembly. The withdrawal of power from the legislature is found in the other clause of the 1906 amendments quoted above, that `[t]he Legislative Assembly shall not enact, amend, or repeal any charter or act of incorporation for any municipality, city or town.' Or.Const. art. XI, § 2.    (Footnotes omitted.) 284 Or. at 176-77, 586 P.2d 765. Article XI, section 2, supra, enlarged the scope of permissible subject matter for local legislation without need for state authorizing legislation. Article IV, section 1(5), differs in that it authorized popular vote as a means of exercising local legislative power. The latter amendment changed neither the scope of local legislative authority, nor the balance of state and local preeminence regarding substantive and organic legislation. Stated otherwise, under Article IV, section 1(5), local government may legislate either by popular vote or by representative vote, but either way, the legislation must be within the scope of municipal legislative authority. Initiative and referendum are a sharing of legislative power between the people and their representatives, not a grant of additional legislative power to either. See, State ex rel. Pierce v. Slusher, 119 Or. 141, 146-47, 248 P. 358 (1926); Zilesch et al. v. Polk County et al., 107 Or. 659, 668, 215 P. 578 (1923); Allison v. Washington County, 24 Or. App. 571, 581, 548 P.2d 188 (1976). Hence the constitutional limitation of municipal initiative and referendum powers to municipal legislation. In this respect, Article IV, section 1(5), is analogous to the reservation of state initiative and referendum powers in the preceding subsections of Article IV, section 1. Article XI, section 2, however, granted pre-eminence in organic legislation to local government, regardless of the mode of legislating, but did not disturb the pre-eminence of the state in substantive legislation relating to subjects of state concern. Thus, a question of dominance of conflicting municipal and state legislation turns upon the substance of the legislation and not upon the manner in which either is enacted. [3] The substance of the legislation was discussed in Part II. The primary social and economic objectives of the legislation have been determined by the legislature to be state concerns even though, like many statutes, PECBA affects activities of local government. In the absence of a superseding statute, the city would have been free to legislate an entirely different scheme of employment relations, with or without collective bargaining and impasse resolution provisions. By virtue of PECBA, however, the decision (impasse arbitration) is now beyond the city's choice. It is immaterial to the validity of the statute that the city council has decided by ordinance to refer to a plebiscite a future decision which is no longer the city's to make. Were it otherwise, local government could cripple the ability of the state to legislate regarding any matter of state policy which affected local governments by the simple expedient of local referendum. The home rule amendments were not intended to have that drastic, general effect. We therefore conclude that ERB's finding that Roseburg had unfairly refused to bargain collectively pursuant to PECBA was lawful. Affirmed. LINDE, J., filed a concurring opinion. DENECKE, C.J., filed a specially concurring opinion. TONGUE, J., filed a dissenting opinion.