Senate Votes a Ban on Bond Initiatives : Government: Bill would prohibit citizens from placing funding measures on ballot. Another would make it easier for courts to strike down propositions.

The Senate voted Monday to prohibit citizens from putting bond issues directly on the statewide ballot and to make it easier for courts to strike down initiatives enacted by voters.

Approval of the two measures, which would have to be submitted to the voters upon Assembly ratification, reflected a long pent-up backlash in the state Capitol against the proliferation of ballot initiatives.

Legislators and governors have complained that bond issues for various projects, such as parks, sometimes jeopardize the funding of other critical programs.

The legislation outlawing initiative bond issues was approved on a 27-9 vote and sent to the Assembly, where its future appears favorable. If it becomes law, only the Legislature and governor would have the authority to put statewide bond issues on the ballot.

The Senate also voted 28-7 in favor of legislation by Senate Leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) to require that any initiative creating a new program or expanding an existing one contain the revenue to finance it.

Historically, many such ballot initiatives have drawn from current state revenues to pay for the voter-approved programs, often at the expense of existing services.

Defenders of the initiative process cite property tax-cutting Proposition 13 of 1978 as an example of voters enacting their own laws in the face of an unresponsive legislative system.

Opponents assert that initiatives have been taken captive by well-heeled special interest groups that ride roughshod over elected government officials and deal great harm to state finances and programs.

No one quibbled with the self-financing feature of the Roberti proposal. However, a second provision that would give courts greater latitude in invalidating initiatives drew a round of fire.

Under the proposal, courts could strike down an entire ballot initiative, even though only one provision might be legally flawed. The legislation would prohibit initiatives from containing “severability” clauses that now allow parts of propositions to remain in force even though other provisions are ruled illegal.

The Legislature routinely includes “severability” clauses in bills it enacts to guard against an entire law falling because one provision is unconstitutional.

Roberti argued that such a restriction would require sponsors of initiatives to draft them more carefully. “We in the Legislature have severability clauses, but we go through (legal) counsel,” he said. “Many initiatives do not go through counsel at all.”

Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), himself the author of legislation to overhaul parts of the initiative process, said that Roberti’s proposal “goes too far.”

Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), who also said he favored revising the initiative process, said he found an outright ban of bond issue initiatives too much to swallow.

He noted that the citizen initiative system was installed by reform Gov. Hiram Johnson in 1911 to give Californians a method of breaking the grip of powerful railroad lobbies over the Legislature. Kopp said that prohibiting citizen-sponsored bond issues “is just too awesome a step to take for me.”