"If there is even the slightest risk that something could raise their taxes, they'll vote no," says CLUE's Richards.
That's what Marble discovered going door to door.
"People didn't want to pay for it. I heard that so many times from people I talked to," he says.
Environmental concerns also helped the opposition. Opponents in Washington and Arizona said the referenda were "pay the polluter" measures that would eviscerate environmental regulations. That charge fueled voters' already negative perception of Republicans and conservatives on environmental issues. Republican pollster Linda DiVall found in a recent nationwide survey that voters prefer Democrats 2-1 over Republicans on the environment. More damning was her finding that Republican voters, particularly those in the suburbs, have more confidence in the Democratic Party to protect the environment. Washington and Arizona voters are no exception.
But for the most part the opposition campaigns soft-pedaled green concerns and concentrated on a pocketbook message: This measure will raise taxes and increase bureaucracy. Late in the Referendum 48 campaign a study by the University of Washington's Institute for Public Policy and Management estimated that the initiative's cost could run as high as $12 billion. Many observers say it was a fatal blow to the pro side. "After that [study was released], most people stopped listening," says Richards.
Proponents tried to discredit the study, pointing out that it was funded by environmental foundations with connections to the opposition campaign and used data collected from local governments, which opposed 48. They argued that the study's estimates were way off, in large part because it assumed that government agencies would continue business as usual.
"I'm convinced that if [Referendum 48] had passed, it would have changed the government's behavior. We wanted government to think twice before imposing new regulations, and make sure it was worth the cost," says Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the Building Association of Washington and one of the leaders of the "yes on 48" campaign.
But they hadn't convinced voters that government behavior needed to be radically changed--certainly not at the price of higher taxes. A Seattle Times poll found that people who thought their taxes would go up voted no by a 3-1 margin. Even worse, Referendum 48 even lost in rural eastern Washington by 6,000 votes.
"They used a conservative argument to defeat a conservative idea," says McCabe.
Many people who supported Referendum 48 say the initiative was its own worst enemy, however. "Referendum 48 was recklessly written. Even those who defended it had to add caveats as to how the legislature could fine-tune it," says radio host Carlson, who led a successful initiative campaign in Washington to pass the nation's first "three strikes" law. "They had all the right ideas and all the right principles, but [Referendum 48's] vagaries allowed critics to make worst-case scenarios."
Wallace Rudolph, a professor of constitutional and administrative law at Seattle University, says he voted for Referendum 48, but its ambiguous wording left several important components open to interpretation: The measure would certainly apply to relevant regulations that were passed after the measure became law. But would it trigger compensation for new enforcement of old regulations (probably), or current enforcement of old regulations (very unlikely)?
Property restrictions for the public benefit--Referendum 48 listed regulations protecting wetlands, buffer zones, fish and wildlife habitat as examples--would have required compensation. Regulations that curtail public nuisances, which represent a harm to the entire community, would not. But there is no comprehensive list or standard to apply.
The public-nuisance standard probably would apply to some zoning regulations, such as prohibiting sewer plants in residential neighborhoods--though House Majority Leader Dale Foreman suggested that a ban on spraying pesticides near a school might require compensation. But most zoning laws would seem to fall under the public benefit heading because they protect and preserve the "essential characteristics" of neighborhoods.
However, John Groen, staff attorney for the Bellevue, Washington, office of the Pacific Legal Foundation, says that Referendum 48 would have required compensation only for regulations similar to the wetland, buffer zone, and habitat restrictions cited in the initiative--which usually leave a portion of the land completely idle. This interpretation would exclude popular zoning ordinances. But it also would mean that government agencies would have been obligated to compensate landowners when part of the property is rendered completely idle, yet could have imposed regulation that sharply limited the use of all of the property without compensation.
Even Dan Wood, the measure's original sponsor, wrote in a memo to Referendum 48 supporters shortly after the defeat that "our opponents have identified 'problem areas' with 164/48. Zoning, Retroactivity, and the Economic Impact Statement were identified as problem areas, as well as some technical language."
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