Court rules that voters will consider Community Bill of Rights for third time

Envision Spokane, a wide-ranging initiative that sought to bolster neighborhood, environmental and labor rights and twice failed at the polls, will be before voters again, after a decision today by a state appellate court. Backers of another measure, put forward by Spokane Moves to Amend the Constitution, was intended to curtail the influence of corporations in local government, did not appeal the earlier decision and the measure will not appear before voters. A unanimous decision by a state appellate court today ruled against the 2013 decision by a Superior Court judge to remove the controversial measures from the general election ballot. The court ordered the city to put the Envision Spokane’s Community Bill of Rights measure on the next available ballot. Kai Huschke, campaign coordinator with Envision, said he “very, very happy and pleased that this will be before voters,” but noted that it wasn’t clear whether Envision’s measure would be on April’s ballot or November’s ballot. He said measures to change the city’s charter have to be on a general election ballot. “Charter amendments are relegated to the general election,” he said. “But we’re definitely ready to pick up the (campaign) when it comes to the Community Bill of Rights.” Michael Cathcart, government affairs director at the Spokane Home Builders Association, said his group, which sued to keep the measures off the earlier ballot, was investigating its next steps. “We’ll work with the coalition to explore any legal remedy that may be available,” he said. “If there are none, then we’ll continue to inform voters that this measure is illegal, it is unconstitutional, it is bad policy and it is dangerous policy for the city of Spokane. Hopefully, the voters will vote accordingly.” Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart said he wouldn’t support efforts to keep the measure from the ballot. “I said (in 2013) that private industry should sue. I wasn’t opposed to private industry suing, but the courts have now spoken,” he said. The government is of the people and by the people. … So suing the citizens as a government does not sit well with me.” Stuckart said he would prefer the measures be on a “cleaner ballot” than April’s, which will have a proposed tax increase for expansion of Spokane Transit Authority’s system. In 2013, Superior Court Judge Maryann Moreno said the measures fell outside the scope of the initiative power. The 2013 decision sided with a coalition of government and business interests, which argued that the initiatives attempted to create regulations and protections that were not within the city’s power to enact. They also said the initiatives would hurt local government and business. Moreno said that while she admired the “passion and advocacy” of the initiatives’ sponsors,the provisions within the measures either conflicted with state and federal law or infringed on the powers of local government to set policy. She ordered county Auditor Vicky Dalton to keep the two initiatives off that fall’s ballot. Four other advisory questions related to the initiatives placed on the ballot by the Spokane City Council will also be removed. The appellate court said Moreno did not have the power to remove the initiatives from the ballot, and ordered the city to put the Envision’s measure on the next available ballot. Legal counsel for the City of Spokane declined comment on the case early Thursday, saying they’d just received the opinion and hadn’t reviewed the appellate court’s decision in advance of the public. After hearing more than an hour of arguments in July of 2013, Moreno spent just a few minutes explaining her ruling before a packed courtroom of 50 people the following month. She invoked constitutional amendments, Supreme Court rulings and the City Charter. “I parsed out every section of the two initiatives,” she said. “I really had to go through each piece of each initiative to make a determination.” Specifically, she applied the Clean Water Act, Growth Management Act, federal and state labor laws, the First and Fifth Amendments, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and campaign exposure law to strike the initiatives. “I, of course, respect the democratic process, and I, too, am a citizen of this community. But there’s really no room in this particular case for my personal opinions about anything,” Moreno said. “When I took my oath as a judge, my oath was to interpret precedent and to apply the law as it’s handed to me.” Both initiatives collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot. Plaintiffs in the challenge were Spokane County, Spokane Entrepreneurial Center, Downtown Spokane Partnership, Greater Spokane Incorporated, the Spokane Building Owners and Managers Association, Spokane Association of Realtors, Spokane Homebuilders Association, Inland Pacific Chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, Avista Corp., Pearson Packaging Systems, Tom Powers, William Butler and Neil Muller. Three Spokane City Council members - Mike Allen, Nancy McLaughlin and Steve Salvatori - were also plaintiffs.