Court Opinion

ID: 9587266
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:20:23.59187+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:11.811370
License: Public Domain

FADELEY, J.,
concurring.
I totally concur in this opinion and with the much-to-be-desired result. The court holds that a failure to comply with the statutory deadline set forth in ORS 250.125 does not invalidate the initiative measures to which the failure relates. But, I would go further and state that the failure of government officials to meet a deadline in a way which crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s should not in any way affect the right of initiative or the legislature’s efforts to inform the voters about the effects of an initiative. The statute central to this and the companion case (Dennehy v. Roberts, 310 Or 394, 798 P2d 663 (1990)) has but four sentences. ORS 250.125 provides that:
“When a state measure involves expenditure of public money by the state, reduction of expenditure of public money by the state, reduction of state revenues or raising of funds by the state by imposing any tax or incurring any indebtedness, the Secretary of State, with the assistance of the State Treasurer, the Director of the Executive Department and the Director of the Department of Revenue, shall estimate the amount of expenditure, reduction of expenditure, reduction in state revenues, tax revenue or indebtedness and interest which will be required to meet the provisions of the measure if it is enacted. The estimate shall state the recurring annual amount involved or, if the measure does not involve a recurring annual amount, the total amount. The estimate shall be certified by the officials named in this section and, not later than the 90th day before the election at which the measure is to be voted upon, it shall be filed, with the data upon which it is based, with the Secretary of State. The estimate shall be printed in the voters’ pamphlet and on the ballot unless the measure involves only administrative expenses not exceeding $50,000 per year.” ORS 250.125.
*410Three of the sentences place absolute duties on state officials. They “shall estimate the amount of expenditure.” The estimate “shall state the recurring annual amount,” and the “estimate shall be printed in the voters’ pamphlet and on the ballot.” A fourth sentence, also in mandatory words, requires two things. The first is “shall be certified by the officials named in this section.” The second is “not later than the 90th day before the election * * * shall be filed.” The statute requires that “the Secretary of State, with the assistance of [others], shall estimate the amount * * * unless the measure involves only administrative expenses not exceeding $50,000 per year.”
State ex rel Anderson v. Paulus, 283 Or 237, 583 P2d 534 (1978), and State ex rel Bunn v. Roberts, 302 Or 72, 726 P2d 925 (1986), relied on to prevent publication of the fiscal impact estimates, are not factually similar to this case. The reasoning of those cases does not extend to the situation in this case. Applying them here is not necessarily required.
In Anderson the voters received the contested information. The court used a strict deadline analysis to choose which of two different explanatory or informational statements should be printed. It did not decide that neither informational statement should be printed. After the Anderson decision, the Voters’ Pamphlet still contained the information.
The statute applicable in Anderson gave all members of a committee to draft a ballot-measure explanation equal responsibility for the contents of that explanation. The statute governing estimates of a measure’s fiscal impacts is different. It directs that the “Secretary of State * * * shall estimate the amount.” The Secretary of State is to do so “with the assistance of’ three other named state officials. Here the Secretary of State — through her attorney, the Attorney General — argues that when she accepted and filed the estimates they became the official, statutorily mandated estimates. They could not be changed except by a court. Thus, stability in the election process was assured. Judicial second-guessing of that executive decision may have created instability; the Secretary’s decision did not.
All estimates were certified and signed before complaints were filed, on timeliness grounds, to prevent the fiscal *411impact information from reaching the voters.1 Over a month remained before the Voters’ Pamphlet was to be printed. The statute does not say that this information is to be withheld from the voters if one or more officials are late signing the estimate. I do not believe the legislature intended that the statutory deadline, when not met by officials, be used to excuse the express mandate to print the measures’ financial effects “in the voters’ pamphlet and on the ballot.”
Likewise, the Bunn court did not prevent information reaching the voters via the Voters’ Pamphlet and ballot. Moreover, neither Bunn nor Anderson held that a failure of government officials to meet a deadline could be the basis for ruling a measure off the ballot. Nothing in the words of the statute, legislative intent, or our decided cases justifies throwing the baby out with its bathwater.
Once the people have lawfully proposed a vote on initiative or referendum measures under our constitution, no failure of government officials to agree or to meet a deadline should ever be construed to cancel the constitutional right to vote on them. Nor is punishing the people by withholding useful information an appropriate, or legislatively intended, remedy for laggardly official acts.

 The State Treasurer certified last, on August 15, that the estimates were those made by the group although he did not accede to some. The Secretary of State had approved and filed the estimates August 8. On August 15, printing of Voters’ Pamphlets, ballots, and pro and con argument submission deadlines were still weeks away. At that point in time, first mailing of absentee ballots was over 40 days in the future. Radio and television broadcast timetables for the estimates, permitted by ORS 251.295, were seven weeks in the future.