And I thought parsing Adorno and other critical studies scholars was difficult. I'm trying to make sense of the first ballot question in NJ this year.
As far as I can tell, neither of them is exactly an attempt to disenfranchise a large segment of the NJ electorate. Perhaps the first is even an attempt to give the voters greater power? I can't quite tell, and when that happens with a ballot question I tend to get nervous.
Maybe it's just the requirement that it fit into a single sentence so it can be called a "question"? Or is that an actual requirement? I thought about going to law school. I didn't have the money. As Rachel Maddow would say, can someone talk me down on this?
I'm usually a little leery of ballot initiatives, but NJ is a state made up of some pretty old traditions. Traditions that probably made a lot of sense back in the day, but that can be readily painted today as unnecessarily inefficient.
Maybe the best thing to do now is give you the language of Question One "without the filter of the media," as Sarah Pancake might say?
Public Question #1
VOTERS TO APPROVE STATE AUTHORITY BONDS PAYABLE FROM STATE APPROPRIATIONS
QUESTION
Do you approve the proposed amendment to the State Constitution which
provides that, after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution, a law enacted thereafter that authorizes State debt created through the sale of bonds by any autonomous public corporate entity, established either as an instrumentality of the State or otherwise exercising public and essential governmental functions, such as an independent State authority, which debt or liability has a pledge of an annual appropriation as the ways and means to pay the interest of such debt or liability as it falls due and pay and discharge the principal of such debt, will be subject to voter approval, unless the payment of the debt is made subject to appropriations of an independent non-State source of revenue paid by third persons for the use of the object or work bonded for, or are from a source of State revenue otherwise required to be appropriated pursuant to another provision of the Constitution?
INTERPRETIVE STATEMENT (on the ballot)
This amendment to the State Constitution will require voter approval of new laws that allow the State to borrow money by issuing bonds through any State agency or independent authority backed by a pledge of an annual appropriation to pay the principal and interest on the bonds. New laws to allow the issuance of these State authority bonds for State government purposes will be subject to voter approval. State courts have ruled that the State constitutional requirement that the Legislature and Governor must seek voter approval for bonded debt does not apply to such borrowing. That requirement is followed only for proposed State bonds that contain a binding, non-repealable pledge to pay off the bonds directly with State taxes. Most State authority bonds can be issued without voter approval because the payment of the bonds is backed only by a promise of the Legislature and the Governor that they will enact appropriations in the future to meet the bond payments. The courts have said this is a legal means of avoiding submitting the issuance of debt for voter approval. Laws to permit such debt that are enacted after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution will have to authorize voter referenda for approval of such debts. Exceptions to voter approval for authority bonds will be permitted if the bonds are to be paid off from 1) a source of revenue dedicated by the State Constitution, which only the voters can establish, or 2) an independent non-State government source of payments for use of projects built or obtained with the borrowed money, such as highway tolls or user fees.
(text copied directly from the League of Women Voters Guide to Ballot Questions)
Okay, I admit that as I've been drafting this I've also been cheating, looking at things like the League of Women Voters Ballot Guide. After reading their attempt at a balanced reading of the reasons to vote for or against this one, I tend to fall in the against column.
To me this appears to be a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences where representative government is concerned. Having lived in an area that desperately felt that a certain irrigation dam project was needed, and had been worked for locally for decades, I have a certain grudging acceptance that "pork barrel" spending is usually the only way that local needs and infrastructure projects and repairs and development ever move forward. This question would add one more twist to the process, requiring that all projects that don't come paired with a source of self-funding would go to a general ballot if they were ever approved by the legislature to begin with.
We have decaying bridges, roads and other critical infrastructure all around us, not unlike the situation America faced going into the Great Depression. To me, this is not the time to be throwing yet more structural roadblocks in the way of the imperfect political process that governs allocation of resources for necessary public works.
I'm sure there may be some situations where a ballot measure might be desirable when it comes to controlling borrowing by the state. I also hope that, now that Federal deferrment of capital spending to the States may become less common given the catastrophic failure of Reabushclintoshrubonomics, some of the pressures on the States may gradually be released. But I won't hold my breath.
Feel free to "talk me down" in your comments.