Bring sanity to the petition process

By Mark Forsythe The Kansas City Post No form of government puts more responsibility on its citizens than a democracy. We are supposed to remain informed, vote intelligently and provide feedback to our elected representatives so that they can more accurately reflect our wants and needs. Kansas City has an identity crisis when it comes to our brand of democracy. On one hand we have a council-manager system which turns over City operations to an unelected individual. At the other extreme we have a petition process written in our charter that allows anyone, even a non-resident to interject themselves into our government by obtaining a few signatures. Because of our poorly conceived petition ordinance, the operations of our city can be severely compromised by anybody with a chip on their shoulder and a clipboard in their hand. Witness the recent machinations of a few individuals calling themselves "Save the Bannister Mall Group Inc." By exploiting an obscure line-item in the City charter they gathered the required 100 registered voter signatures to force a halt to the enactment of the Bannister Mall redevelopment project. They have until January 22nd to submit 8,475 valid signatures to force the issue to a referendum. Granted it's only a temporary halt to the inevitable. Having gathered a few signatures myself, I'm pretty confident in stating that four people won't be able to gather over 8000 signatures in 10 days. Really all they've done is get their names in the paper and their faces on television which appears to be all they really wanted in the first place. But is it really sound policy that 100 signatures can put a 10 day halt on any ordinance? That leaves an awfully huge opportunity for fraud in my opinion. What's to keep anyone from ratholing a hundred signatures for whatever suits their purpose? We're all painfully aware of the other petition problem. When not trying to put a temporary stay on an ordinance, a petitioner has as long as they want to gather enough signatures to put something on the ballot. And once again, the actual petitioner doesn't even have to be a resident. You can be a... oh I don't know... you could be an unemployable lawn boy from Virginia who has nothing better to do than stand outside grocery stores for a few months. 5% of the amount of people who voted in the last mayoral election is a lot of signatures but spread out over weeks and months it becomes academic. When one person with too much time on their hands can alter the course of our city, we have a problem. Instead of employing their charter powers of rescinding petition initiatives and allowing themselves to be held hostage for ten days at any given point, perhaps it's time for the City Council to revisit our charter and change the way in which our petition system works. I've always maintained the City Charter should be a living document, and we as citizens should be constantly crafting it to improve its performance. Simple changes like residency requirements for the petitioners, time limits and a higher amount of signatures required for a temporary stay of an ordinance would be welcome changes. Or maybe they wouldn't... We should let the voters decide! Hmmmm. Maybe I'll start a petition...