WYPR: Speed Cameras Trigger Debate Over Referendum in Maryland (2009-06-29)

A recently enacted state law -- that authorizes local jurisdictions to use cameras to photograph speeders and mail them tickets -- has raised questions about the process that allows Marylanders to petition laws to referendum. WYPR's Milton Kent has the story.

With a little more time, Daniel Zubairi thinks he could have struck down what he thinks is a bad law.

Zubairi, a managing director for a defense contractor, was outraged when the Maryland General Assembly passed in April a measure to allow counties and Baltimore City to use highway cameras to photograph speeders.

Gov. Martin O'Malley signed the bill into law last month, and Zubairi set out to overturn the law through a referendum.

"People don't want these things, especially in a really tough economy, where people are just trying to survive and make ends meet. This was the wrong time to do it, even if you put the Big Brother mentality, corporate profiteering off traffic enforcement aside. It was just the wrong time to do it."

However, Zubairi and an ad hoc committee, calling itself Maryland for Responsible Enforcement, fell 16-hundred short of the proscribed number of voter signatures to trigger a referendum in the 2010 general election.

As a result, local governments will have the right, beginning in October, to install speed cameras in areas within a one-half- mile radius of schools, and also near construction areas, beginning this October. Drivers who are caught going 12 miles-per-hour or more over the speed limit can be fined as much as 40 dollars.

State Senator Alex Mooney, who helped lead the fight against the bill in the legislature, says there was enough popular support to challenge the bill in a referendum.

"And this bill and many others should be petitioned to referendum. I think the voters would have knocked it down, if they had a chance to vote on it, but they're not going to."

In order to challenge a bill passed by the General Assembly, signatures equaling three percent of the total number of voters, who cast ballots in the most recent gubernatorial election, must be collected statewide.

With the 2006 election as the base, petitioners would have to present approximately 53-thousand signatures of registered voters to the Maryland Secretary of State by June 30th. A third of that total has to be collected by May 31st.

While Daniel Zubairi believes the requirement, that signatures on the petition must match the one that appears on a voter identification card is a tough one. The bigger obstacles, he adds, were the May and June deadlines.

"If they'd have said, Yes, you've got six months to do this,' that would have not been a problem. But, to collect that many signatures to coordinate in such a short period of time makes it very difficult for the citizens to have their voice heard."

William Reynolds, a professor of judicial process at the University of Maryland's School of Law, says the framers who drafted the state's Constitution, appeared not to want voters to have direct influence over legislation.

That said, Reynolds believes the Maryland system is superior to that of, say, California, where voters not only have the right of referendum, but also of initiative, where they can propose and enact their own laws. These measures effectively bypass the legislature in the Golden State.

"If you are worried about paralysis and about government not being able to do things that at least some people think it should be doing, you would look at the outcomes in California and say this should not happen here."

John Willis, a former Maryland Secretary of State, and current instructor at the University of Baltimore, says that while there have only been 18 state laws ever petitioned to statewide ballot initiatives, the referendum process is not as difficult here as in other states.

"It's work. You have to organize like you're running a campaign. You can't just say, This is a bad law,' and go to your neighborhood shopping center. You have to understand that this is a big state."

The anti-speed camera forces are apparently taking that idea to heart.

Organizers vow to launch a strategy to battle the new law county-by-county, hoping to succeed locally where they couldn't prevail on a statewide basis.