Ralph Muecke

Gladstone

Tis the season for legislative referrals: Fa-la-la-la-la.

That’s right. There are currently three referrals of new laws passed by our wonderful, citizen, RINO (Republican in name only), controlled Legislature and signed into law by our RINO governor.

It’s a joyful season in that we can exercise our legal right of referral as guaranteed by our ND State Constitution to hold those we elect accountable.

The three bills that have become law are

(1) The appropriation of $ 50 million to build the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Library. We believe it is a total waste of taxpayer money and should be built with all private funds.

(2) Restore the full authority of the State Auditors office. It’s very hard to believe that our RINO legislators didn’t realize what was in that bill when they passed it. Especially considering how they hated the ethics measure.

(3) The Open Records Law. This law weakens the requirement of certain laws and/or documents that would otherwise be open for public scrutiny.

These three laws must be put before a public vote. That’s what referrals are all about. To do that, we need to obtain signatures of 2 percent of the state’s population to put these laws before the people onto the ballot. We the people have the final say so whether these laws live or die. This is as it should be, regardless of how bad they hate the initiative and referral process.

Petition circulators will be out in full force at parades and events over the 4th of July. Be sure to sign these referrals when approached. Become a circulator yourself.

After that we may decide to do an initiated measure to establish term limits for all legislators and state elected officials. Good idea?