Court Opinion

ID: 9537661
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:21:04.791487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:52.979650
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the court’s opinion because it improperly imposes state referendum requirements on Anchorage home-rule referendum procedure. By striking the referendum from the ballot, I believe that the court unnecessarily and unreasonably interfered in the political process.
I. ADDITIONAL FACTS
From December 1992 to January 1993, the Anchorage Assembly debated the merits of ordinance AO 92-116. On four separate occasions, the Assembly conducted public hearings to enable citizens to express their views both for and against the ordinance. A total of 195 citizens, representing both sides of the issue, spoke at the public hearings. The hearings were broadcast on local cable television. The Assembly passed the ordinance on January 12, 1993. The mayor vetoed it three days later, and the Assembly overrode the veto on January 19.
Shortly after the Assembly overrode the veto a group of citizens began circulating a petition seeking a referendum on the ordinance. The referendum sponsors also placed a copy of the petition in the local newspaper. As the court notes, with masterful understatement in my opinion, “[t]he group obtained more than the minimum number of signatures required.” 1 Following the Municipal Clerk’s certification of the petition, Faipeas challenged the clerk’s decision in superior court.
II. DISCUSSION
The court strikes the referendum from the ballot by reading requirements applicable to state referendum procedures into the word “describe” as it is used in § 2.56.030 of the Anchorage Municipal Code. I find the court’s interpretation strained and its analysis unpersuasive.
The court begins by focusing on state referendum procedures, noting that state referendum petitions “must be truthful and impartial.” Opinion at 1218. This requirement is entirely reasonable given that AS *122215.45.320 mandates that state referendum petitions contain an “impartial summary of the subject-matter.” The court then reasons that because the state imposes a requirement of impartiality on its own officers, it should also be imposed on the citizens of a home-rule municipality as a matter of public policy. Opinion at 1220-1221. The only acceptable referendum description, in the court’s view, is one devoid of any partisan sentiment.
To bolster this construction, the court relies on language drawn from a Montana case, Sawyer Stores, Inc. v. Mitchell, 103 Mont. 148, 62 P.2d 342, 348 (1936), in which the Montana Supreme Court construed a statute requiring a ballot to include a legend “descriptive of the measure proposed.” See Opinion at 1219. The court’s reliance on this case is misplaced. The court fails to distinguish between the function of petitions and ballots. The requirement that the Sawyer court quite properly imposed on ballots has no place on petitions. A ballot is the paper upon which each voter gives expression to his or her choice. Id. A biased, misleading, or inaccurate ballot undermines the voting process. Id. A petition, however, is the vehicle by which citizens bring an issue into the public arena. It is the beginning, not the end, of political debate.
Equally strained is the court’s attempt to justify imposing this requirement on petitioning citizens by “necessarily implying]” state petition requirements into the Anchorage procedure. The court’s analogy understates the fundamental differences between the state and Anchorage referendum processes. It also ignores the fact that the state deliberately opted not to impose those requirements on Anchorage and other home-rule municipalities.
Under the state scheme, citizens propose a referendum by filing an application and a $100 filing fee with the lieutenant governor. AS 15.45.260. Within seven calendar days, the lieutenant governor must review the application and either certify it or notify the referendum sponsors of the grounds for denial. AS 15.45.300. The three grounds for denial do not include the partiality of the petition. If the application is certified, the lieutenant governor must prepare a petition within seven calendar days. AS 15.45.320. It is here that the state’s requirement of impartiality comes in. The state-prepared petition must contain, among other things, an impartial summary of the subject matter of the act. Id.
The state referendum procedure is directly analogous to the procedure the legislature mandated for non-home rule municipalities.2 However, the legislature expressly declined to impose those requirements on Anchorage and other home-rule municipalities. Instead, it gave them the right to develop their own procedures.3
*1223The Municipality of Anchorage exercised that right and placed the responsibility of preparing petitions directly in the hands of its citizens. Under the Anchorage Municipal Code, initiative and referendum petitions must:
A. Describe the ordinance or resolution sought by the petition;
B. State upon the petition, when circulated, the date of first circulation of the petition;
C. Contain the statement, when circulated, that the signatures on the petition must be secured within 90 days from the date of the first circulation; and
D. Have the required signatures, dates of signatures and resident and mailing addresses of the signers, unless the signers’ qualifications can be ascertained from the state voter registration rolls on the basis of either residence or mailing address.
AMC 2.50.030. The petition must be signed by a number of qualified. voters equal to at least 10 percent of the votes cast at the last regular mayoral elections. AMC 2.50.040(A). Nowhere does the ordinance require that the petition description be free from partisan coloring.
Anchorage would of course be free to require that citizen prepared petitions be couched in neutral language. But there is no constitutional or statutory requirement that it do so.4 Courts across the country have repeatedly recognized the broad authority of home-rule municipalities to define the manner in which their citizens may exercise the powers of initiative and referendum. See Leach & Arnold Homes, Inc. v. City of Boulder, 32 Colo.App. 16, 507 P.2d 476, 477 (1973); see also Burks v. Lafayette, 142 Colo. 61, 349 P.2d 692 (1960); Brown v. Boyd, 33 Cal.App.2d 416, 91 P.2d 926 (1939); Long v. City of Portland, 53 Or. 92, 98 P. 149 (1908); State ex rel. Snyder v. Board of Elections of Lucas County, 78 Ohio App. 194, 69 N.E.2d 634, 33 O.O. 519 dismissed as moot, 146 Ohio St. 556, 67 N.E.2d 322, 33 O.O. 43 (1946); see generally 5 Eugene McQuillin, The Law of Municipal Corporations, § 16.42 at 290 (3d ed. re. vol. 1989).
However, in an exercise of judicial “interpretation,” the court concludes that the term “describe,” as used in the Anchorage ordinance, necessarily implies that the description be impartial and that the petition itself must be “a source of accurate information for the uncommitted citizen concerning what is being proposed.” I disagree. When citizens launch a referendum drive, they are by their very actions expressing disapproval and disagreement with their government. They are expressing this disagreement both to the government and to their fellow citizens. The entire referendum process is inherently “biased and partisan”; it is political.
The court suggests that the partisan rhetoric of the petition title in this case thwarted the screening function of the petition in the referendum process. Opinion at 1219. The court’s reasoning is a classic example of ivory-tower thinking. The prac*1224tical reality is that petition tables are staffed by enthusiastic advocates who disseminate their positions with banners and slogans. In the face of such partisanship, I find it highly doubtful that a neutrally worded petition title would have measurably affected the petition drive itself.5
In addition, it must be remembered that this case involved a referendum seeking to repeal an existing ordinance, rather than an initiative proposing new legislation. As the Oregon Supreme Court has observed, the distinction is significant.
The purpose of the petition for referendum is to identify a particular enactment of the legislative assembly which the petitioners desire to have referred to the people — a question of identity, not of legislation. There is a distinction in that regard between the referendum and the initiative, in which latter legislation is initiated and the whole matter must be formulated just as it is to be submitted to the people, while in the referendum it is only a question of the approval or disapproval by the people of what the Legislature has already enacted into law.
Palmer v. Benson, 50 Or. 277, 91 P. 579, 580 (1907); see also Columbia River Salmon & Tuna Packers Ass’n v. Appling, 232 Or. 230, 375 P.2d 71, 73 (1962) (reiterating functional differences between initiatives and referendums).
The description requirement of the Anchorage Municipal Code in the referendum context is clearly designed to identify the ordinance challenged. The petition in this case did just that:
[W]e the undersigned qualified voters of the Municipality of Anchorage submit this Referendum Petition Calling for the repeal of Anchorage Ordinance 92-116(S), initially passed January 12, 1993 (Amending Title 5 of the Anchorage Municipal Code). In particular, the undersigned request that the question:
Should AO 92-116(S), which adds “sex-, ual orientation” to the list of protected classes for the purpose of public employment or municipal contractors, remain law? YES [ ] NO [ ]
be placed before the voters of the Municipality of Anchorage as a referendum question.
The biased wording in the petition’s title does not negate the fact that the petition itself identified the ordinance in question. The title was, at most, surplusage.
This court has adopted a deferential standard of review when analyzing the sufficiency of initiative and referendum petitions. See Burgess v. Alaska Lieutenant Governor, 654 P.2d 273, 276 (Alaska 1982).
In reviewing an initiative prior to submission to the people, the requirements of the constitutional and statutory provisions pertaining to the use of initiatives should be liberally construed so that “the people [are] permitted to vote and express their will on the proposed legislation ... all doubts as to technical deficiencies or failure to comply with the exact letter of procedure will be resolved in favor of the accomplishment of that purpose.”
*1225Yute Air Alaska, Inc. v. McAlpine, 698 P.2d 1173, 1181 (Alaska 1985). The court has disregarded this precedent and stretched to find a defect in the petition. This act of judicial legislation has unreasonably deprived the citizens of Anchorage of the opportunity to vote on this issue.

. The group needed to obtain 5,672 signatures to place its petition on the ballot. Within a month after the mayor's veto was overridden, the group turned 20,000 signatures into the Municipal Clerk’s office.

. In non-home rule municipalities, citizens seeking a referendum must file an application, signed by at least ten people, with the municipal clerk. AS 29.26.110. The clerk must certify the referendum application within two weeks if the clerk determines the application is in the proper form. AS 29.26.110. Within two weeks of certification, the clerk must prepare a petition containing a summary of the ordinance or resolution to be referred. AS 29.26.120. This petition must be signed by 25 percent of the votes cast in the last regular election if the municipality has fewer than 7,500 persons, or 15 percent of the votes cast in the last regular election if the municipality has 7,500 persons or more. AS 29.26.130(b).

. The Alaska Legislature left home-rule municipalities free to choose their own referendum procedures. When the legislature revised the municipal code in 1975, it explicitly stated which provisions it intended to apply to home rule municipalities:
Home rule limitations are gathered together and listed in one place in Article 2 of the chapter (Sec. 29.13.100) [renumbered to 29.-10.200 in 1985]. The listing makes explicit the legislative intent as to which provisions of the code apply to home rule municipalities, as prohibitions on acting otherwise than as provided, and which do not. Additionally, the provisions themselves contain a specific reference making them applicable to home rule municipalities. The listing and specific references in the provisions are intended to coincide. (As additional provisions of law are enacted subsequent to the time the code takes effect, provisions which are intended to apply to home rule as well as to general law munici*1223palities as prohibitions on acting otherwise than as provided should make a specific reference to home rule municipalities within the provision and should, under the form of the new code, also be included in the listing under Sec. 29.13.100, so as to maintain clearly the legislative distinction as to which code provisions apply to home rule municipalities and which do not.)
1972 House Journal 1720 and 1972 Senate Journal Supp. 3, p. 3 (emphasis added).
AS 29.10.200 does not list the non-home rule initiative and referendum procedures. The Legislature unquestionably did not intend them to apply to home-rule municipalities. To the contrary, it intended non-home rule municipalities to be unconstrained by requirements controlling state initiative and referendum procedures.

. I do not find persuasive the court’s curious constitutional argument that because “it is basic to our democratic society that the people be afforded the opportunity of expressing their will on the multitudinous issues which confront them,” they should be denied the right to raise those issues before the public forum in their own words. See Opinion at 1219, n. 8 (quoting Boucher v. Bomhoff, 495 P.2d 77, 78 (Alaska 1972)).

. Some commentators have cast doubt on the notion that language in petitions and ballots has a measurable effect on election results. See Robert Horvat, "The Oregon Initiative Process: A Critical Appraisal" 65 Oregon L.Rev. 169, 172 (1984).
Furthermore, the citizens of Anchorage were unusually knowledgeable about this particular ordinance. The Assembly considered the issue for weeks. It held four public hearings, at which 195 citizens expressed their views. The hearings were broadcast on local cable television. Additionally, the ordinance received extensive coverage by the local electronic media and press. For example, from December 1, 1992, when the Assembly held the first public hearing concerning the ordinance, until February 16, 1993, the day before the petitions were given to the Municipal Clerk, the Anchorage Daily News had at least seven articles on page one; 11 articles on the first page of the paper's Metro section; 37 letters to the editor; and 16 editorials and other articles referring to the ordinance. Because over twenty thousand voters signed the petition in this case, while only 5,672 were required, an impartially worded petition would have almost certainly garnered the number of signatures required to place the referendum on the ballot.