Court orders deadline for initiative decision
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Mark Rindner ruled Friday that Lt. Gov. Loren Leman has until Oct. 25 to certify or reject a ballot initiative that would change the way vacancies in the U.S. Senate are filled.
The initiative sponsors - Democratic state Reps. Harry Crawford and Eric Croft of Anchorage and David Guttenberg of Fairbanks - took the matter to court after waiting more than a month for Attorney General Gregg Renkes and Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, a Republican, to respond.
The initiative would require a special election to fill an Alaska vacancy in the U.S. Senate, rather than by an appointment by the governor.
The initiative is in response to Gov. Frank Murkowski's appointment of his daughter, Lisa Murkowski, to his U.S. Senate seat last year after he was elected governor.
The initiative committee Trust the People submitted its first version of the initiative petition on Aug. 6, but it was rejected by Leman for technical deficiencies.
Trust the People resubmitted the petition on Sept. 4 and has since received no decision from Renkes or Leman.
A letter to Renkes from Trust the People lawyer Peter J. Aschenbrenner on Oct. 3 states: "... this is the second merit review that the lieutenant governor has requested which addresses the same text. Any merit deficiency which was not apparent at the Department of Law's first brush in August could not be serious enough to warrant further review."
If the initiative petition is approved by Leman, Trust the People will have until Jan. 12, 2004, to collect more than 23,000 signatures in order to make it onto the 2004 ballot.
To collect about 30,000 signatures - enough to ensure that invalid signatures are covered - Trust the People would have to garner about 500 signatures a day, Croft said.
"That would be tight," he said.
Croft said that although Renkes has not issued a formal opinion on the initiative petition, the attorney general's office is alleging that it violates the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
That amendment states that "the Legislature of any state may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the Legislature may direct."
Croft argues that rejecting the petition on the grounds that it is in violation of the U.S. Constitution exceeds the Department of Law's scope of authority.
"If that were the rule, what a tremendous power we have vested over our initiative rights in an unelected official," Croft said.
• Timothy Inklebarger can be reached at timothyi@juneauempire.com.