Yesterday’s Globe reports that casino opponents are considering a referendum to put the question of repealing the law before the voters.
Among the difficulties they’ll be facing is the fact that under the State Constitution, bills that “appropriate money” are referendum-proof (Amendment 48, Referendum Petitions, Section 2, here):
Section 2. Excluded Matters. No law that relates to religion, religious practices or religious institutions; or to the appointment, qualification, tenure, removal or compensation of judges; or to the powers, creation or abolition of courts; or the operation of which is restricted to a particular town, city or other political division or to particular districts or localities of the commonwealth; or that appropriates money for the current or ordinary expenses of the commonwealth or for any of its departments, boards, commissions or institutions shall be the subject of a referendum petition.
And the casino law does appropriate money — $5,500,000 to be exact, to the Governor’s office to work out some deal with the Indian tribes, and to the Attorney General to get ready for the anticipated crime wave.
Insulating the law from the referendum process in this way is one of the things they must have worked out behind those closed doors.
The referendum would not be about the appropriation but about legalizing casinos. The funding cited in the bill is administrative costs for the over-reiding policy. Much like the state racing commission was funded to regulate dog racing. That didn’t affect the validity of the referendum.
Go for it. The funding is a red herring.
agreed with you – I’d like to see it on the ballot too (although JimC”s prediction about the outcome is probably on target).
The Corporate Suits learned a lesson in 1998 when they tried to convince the SJC that their electricity deregulation law was exempt from the referendum and they lost. The lesson was — in order for your law to be safe you need to throw a couple of appropration items in there.
No doubt the appropriations would be red herrings to the main point of the repeal effort. The problem is they’d also be fatal.
I think it would pass overwhelmingly in towns near the casino, be close in liberal towns like Cambridge and Somerville, and fail convincingly everywhere else.