BOSTON — After certifying a record 44 initiative petitions as eligible for the ballot last fall, Attorney General Andrea Campbell said this week the vetting process should be reformed to enable her office to weigh in on whether the actual questions propose policies that are constitutional.
Campbell’s office greenlights questions based on criteria outlined in the Massachusetts Constitution, such as ensuring the initiative petitions don’t relate to religion, powers of the courts, appointment of judges, or a specific appropriation from the state treasury. Proposed questions also cannot infringe on constitutional rights. But the AG told hundreds of business leaders that she thinks there’s a big gap within the Article 48 process.
“They designed a process that actually doesn’t see if the question itself is constitutional before we send it to voters,” Campbell said Wednesday at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce forum at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf.
“Nowhere in our analysis and certifying the question do we have to ask is this constitutional … which is ridiculous,” Campbell said. “So you have folks voting on something where the implementation of it could be unconstitutional parts of it. And how do you explain that to a voter who’s going and exercising their civil right to vote?”
During a radio appearance this month, Campbell called ballot question certification a “stupid process founded by some other people” that needs to be “revamped.”
Campbell did not reference specific ballot questions Wednesday. But constitutional separation of power concerns have dogged the voter-backed law allowing Auditor Diana DiZoglio to probe the Legislature, although lawmakers have not opted to seek an advisory opinion from the high court on that law’s constitutionality.
This election cycle, Campbell’s office recently had to backtrack its certification of an initiative petition that looked to overhaul the legislative stipends system. In an advisory opinion sought by lawmakers, the Supreme Judicial Court said the petition was improperly certified because it proposed a rule change rather than a law — and therefore overstepped the constitutional parameters of what ballot questions can do.
Other potential ballot questions are still awaiting SJC decisions, including whether Campbell’s office botched legally required summaries for petitions to slash the income tax rate and to repeal the 2016 legalization of recreational marijuana. The high court is also deliberating whether a proposed all-party system crosses constitutional lines and if a rent stabilization measure improperly ties to religion.
Campbell asserted that some policy changes are constitutional while others are not, but said “never at the outset is that a part of our analysis of approving the question.”
“That has to change,” Campbell said. “So that when a voter gets a ballot question, there’s some type of analysis of the constitutionality of it at the outset, or it’s just done differently, so that when they vote for something, they know it will actually happen, and so they don’t feel as though they’re being shut out of the process or that their voice is not being heard.”
She did not describe how the process might specifically be changed.
Campbell used her chamber appearance to also spotlight her office’s 57 lawsuits against the Trump administration, as she recapped efforts to protect federal funding for public schools, transportation infrastructure, public safety and public health.
“The federal administration has threatened to take away $4 billion from the commonwealth — a gap that the state and Senator Spilka would say the same when she shows up in June — the state could never be able to close that gap,” Campbell said. “My office has helped protect over $3 billion of that $4 billion threat.”
Spilka is slated to speak at the chamber’s government affairs forum June 11.
Campbell also promoted her $500,000 Phone-Free Schools Support Grant, designed to help public schools, charter schools and educational collaboratives create more engaging learning environments without electronic distractions. She said the effort will mitigate online bullying and harassment, while also limiting children’s access to “addictive” social media platforms.
“Right now, some school districts in Massachusetts have phone-free school districts, like Ipswich where I was recently visiting, where you go in and the young people have to put their phones away throughout the school day and focus on learning,” Campbell said. “And we have educators focused only on teaching and not being cellphone police.”
Grant applications are due June 5, with the grant expected to start on Sept. 1, according to Campbell’s office. Legislation implementing a statewide school cellphone ban is in conference committee.