Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
Old guard to Iowa City voters: “Don’t change the status quo, or all hell will break lose.”
Note: This is part 3 of our trilogy debunking the mix of misinformation, whitewashed history and poor logic put forward by the pro-establishment crowd over at Iowa City Beacon in relation to Public Measure C.
Iowa City’s old guard is apparently in a frenzy over the pretty high possibility that Public Measure C might pass. There have been four write ups in the Iowa City Beacon — an online outlet sprung up and funded by the pro-establishment crowd in the wake of 2015 Iowa City election — in the last three weeks urging people to vote ‘no’ on Measure C.
The pieces—two written by former council members John Balmer and Rick Dobyns, one by wanna-be council member Tim Conroy and the latest one by former Iowa City Public Works director Rick Fosse — all boil down to different variations of the same tune: “Don’t change the status quo, or all hell will to break lose.”
To support their narrative, the writers withhold and misrepresent the information, whitewash the history of the issue and completely ignore the fact that the status quo is literally unprecedented in its suppression of our right to petition local government.
The apparent goal is to seed Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
The following claim in the latest installment by Mr. Fosse is particularly amusing in its absurdity:
Measure C, in plain and simple terms, will make it easier for special interests to influence local government by significantly reducing the required number of signatures necessary for initiative and referendum measures. Carefully timed referendums can capitalize on elections with traditionally low voter turnout to pass measures without a broad base of community support.
Of course, in reality it’s exactly the opposite — “special interests” are about the only ones who can take advantage of the current initiative and referendum process to put items on the ballot.
The status quo requires petitioners to spend anywhere between 1,000 to 1,500 hours amassing signatures, simply to bring an issue for discussion before the City Council and/or the voters. That’s 6 to 9 months of full-time work. De facto this means that today the only people who can afford to petition local government are those with deep enough pockets to hire paid staff to collect signatures for them—i.e. “special interests” and their ilk.
Lowering the minimum signature requirements makes little difference for special interests — for any entity you’d label as such, $3,600 ($1 per signature) spent on getting something on the ballot is pocket change. But a more reasonable signature count makes all the difference in the world for a group of citizens who are passionate about an issue, but also have jobs, families, kids, extracurriculars, aging parents — you know, life.
As things stand right now, a corporation or even a single well-off person doesn’t have to sacrifice anything to put forward an issue, but regular citizens have to literally put their and their families’ lives on hold. Public Measure C evens out the playing field — not fully, but enough so that the citizens don’t have to kill themselves in the process of campaigning for something that matters to them.
The ultimate irony of arguing that “special interests” will get an upper hand under more reasonable petition signature requirements is of course that special interests rarely need to resort to a petition in order to have their way. Direct lobbying of government officials is often much more effective and covert. The Iowa City Uber story is probably the best most recent example of this.
Now, some of us actually happen to think that having Uber in Iowa City is a good thing. However, the way they got past the deal-breaking provisions in the City Code is highly illustrative. Uber could have easily sponsored a citizen petition to change the City Code to their liking and put the issue on the ballot, but that would require a lot of campaigning and associated public discussion. Instead, they lobbied the City directly, had a bit of help from a free-market advocacy group and got what they wanted without all the headache of a ballot issue campaign.
Instead of 10,000 people, they had to convince just seven.
(If you ever tried to lobby the City Council, you’ve probably noticed that “special interests” are for some reason much more successful in that endeavor than any citizen group, no matter how sizable.)
Mr. Fosse, having worked in Iowa City government for 30 years and thus very likely having witnessed a fair dose of all of the above, should of course know better than to make this argument. Perhaps he was betting that the brazenness of his absurd claim is what will make it work.
If you are curious, feel free to ask him.
It’s worth noting that in the overwhelming majority of initiative and referendum statutes across the country the “minimum number of signatures” requirement is exactly 10 percent of the people who voted in the last election — the same percentage that’s codified in the Iowa Code Section 362.4 and that’s being proposed by Public Measure C.
Looking for more info? Check out Fixing the City Charter, When is 5.33% a round number? and The Sky Has Already Fallen, Mr. Balmer
