Assembly Seeks Initiative System Review : Government: Lawmakers call for a panel to explore whether the process is abused by special interests. Dissenters say it must be retained for a ‘frustrated electorate.’

SACRAMENTO —  Concerned that California’s initiative process is being abused by competing special interests, the Assembly on Monday called for the creation of a citizens’ commission to recommend whether it should be changed.

A resolution calling for such a panel was sent to the Senate on a vote of 44 to 21. “The initiative process has become a multimillion-dollar-a-year industry that has run amok,” said Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno), the resolution’s author. “Public relations firms are making big bucks on the initiative process.”

An opponent, Assemblyman Phillip Wyman (R-Tehachapi) said the process might not be “perfect”--but it is there “for a frustrated electorate to solve problems that the Legislature was supposed to solve in the first place.”

The resolution said some recent initiatives have been written to benefit sponsors or cancel out competing ballot measures, or are “extremely complex regulatory schemes or wholesale proposals for the overhaul of entire areas of state law.”

It also noted the recent growth of an initiative industry of attorneys, paid petition circulators and campaign consultants who collectively have made millions of dollars from ballot measures.

For instance, $91 million was spent on the 28 measures that appeared on the November ballot last year, according to the resolution.

The 15-member citizens’ commission would include a dozen appointed members, plus the attorney general, the secretary of state and the president of the County Clerks Assn. It would submit a report with recommendations to the Legislature by March 1.

The lawmakers could adopt the changes either by statute or by constitutional amendment.

Members would represent public interest groups, the academic community, the public and the business sector.

In a related action, the lower house rejected a competing bill by Assemblyman Stan Statham (R-Oak Run) to create the commission under law, which would give it more legal teeth.

The losing vote was 45 to 23 with a two-thirds majority, or 54 votes, required for approval. Statham said he would seek reconsideration.

“We want to make sure that people can’t buy their own law in this state,” the Northern California lawmaker said. “California’s laws are not for sale.”

Assemblyman Richard L. Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) criticized the commission concept as “nothing but nonsense” and said “the voters can separate the wheat from the chaff.”

The right of the initiative was added to the state Constitution in 1911 as a means for the electorate to diffuse the power of special interests and monopolies.