jonetta rose barras: Is it time to reform the ballot initiative process in DC?

Mayor Muriel Bowser has pledged to include in her proposed Fiscal Year 2026 Budget and Financial Plan the repeal of Initiative 82, the citizen ballot measure that has wreaked havoc on the restaurant and hospitality industry. Even if approved by the DC Council, that action won’t go far enough. The goal should be the immediate reform of the entire initiative system.

As someone who worked for 10 years as a professional community organizer in various cities and states — Mississippi, New Jersey, San Francisco and Boston, for example — I take civic engagement seriously. I have learned, however, that not all citizen-led efforts are healthy or wise.

Over the past decade, several voter initiatives in DC have been instigated and financed by individuals or organizations based outside of the District’s borders, using the city as a petri dish to advance national issues. On the surface their proposals seemed innocent, thus gaining the support of sufficient numbers of residents to win their passage. 

Too often, those ballot measures have eroded the quality of life for many communities. They also have burdened government resources and hammered the city’s economy. 

More of the same is promised by the two currently in the queue. 

One — the “Time Stability Act” — would eliminate daylight saving time; a hearing before the DC Board of Elections is scheduled for June 4. What happens if the federal government maintains the current system? Would the city become a confusing dual time zone? Would crossing the Potomac push you an hour back or forward for much of the year?

The other citizen initiative — “Use of RFK Site for Homes not Stadiums” — would prohibit construction of a new stadium on the site where a stadium has existed for more than 50 years. It would require the council to prepare a new zoning map and change zoning laws. Except that authority is vested in the DC Zoning Commission. The hearing for that measure is scheduled for July 2.

Plainly put, DC has an initiatives problem.

“Many of the complaints that I am hearing from the public are that many of the initiatives seem to be dominated by outside interests,” DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson told me during an interview earlier this week.

He said implementing reforms would require amending the Home Rule Act — as if that has never been done before. Mendelson has helped push through two charter amendments: One created the elected attorney general and the other gave DC budget autonomy.

I appreciate that with Republicans in control of Congress and the madman in the White House, Mendelson may be reluctant about instituting reforms, believing that it could encourage hostile federal forces to intrude on local affairs. However, District officials shouldn’t let one injury fester fearing that someone else will cause another.

Besides, he already introduced the Initiative Amendment Act of 2025, which would ensure that initiatives won’t have any effect on the appropriation of funds. Separately, at-large Councilmember Anita Bonds introduced the Petition Administration Clarification Amendment Act of 2025, which would prohibit anyone from altering signer information on a qualifying petition — whether for a candidate or initiative — after a voter has signed that document.

The proposals are mostly tweaks. It’s clear from testimony during the public roundtable held this week before Bonds’ Committee on Executive Administration and Labor that the city’s entire election system needs a full examination — from initiatives to the process for challenging political candidates’ qualifying petitions, to filing vacant advisory neighborhood commission seats. The DC Board of Elections is a spectacular mess.

“The board’s integrity is at issue,” Robert Brannum, a member of the Ward 5 Leadership Committee, said at the roundtable. “The board is losing the trust of the people of the District of Columbia and in some instances members of the council.”

Brannum noted that he sent a letter asking DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb to investigate circumstances surrounding the handling of Initiative 83, which called for ranked choice voting and semi-open primaries in future DC elections.

The OAG may have a conflict in this case. In a written opinion that I labeled legal contortion, Schwalb indicated that I-83 was a proper subject for an initiative, as long as it included language making it subject to appropriations. The BOE did exactly as instructed.

That dishonesty and shenanigans paved the way for I-83 to be placed on the ballot in last year’s general election, with the misleading name “Make All Votes Count DC.” 

After the board’s decision to allow I-83 to move forward, Mendelson immediately introduced the Initiative Amendment Act of 2023, arguing that the “novel interpretation … put before the voters an Initiative proposal that will not be meaningful because it will not be funded” or sought to “bind the Council to appropriate funds, because this is the voters’ will.” 

He also chastised the Elections Board for now allowing “Initiative proposals for any law that has a cost — even a substantial cost — so long as it is ‘subject to appropriation,’” which surely misrepresents the intent of the Home Rule Act.

The council has yet to vote on Mendelson’s bill, although Bonds, co-introducer of the 2023 version, is the committee chair and could have moved it for quick consideration. Council records show that it was initially on a March 2024 agenda for markup but then removed. (Mendelson reintroduced the bill this year, although Bonds didn’t sign on this time.)

Despite Mendelson’s attempt to right things, I-83 was marked by fraudulent behavior of its leading proposers, which ended in several being sanctioned for violating DC election laws. The penalty was nothing more than a mild reprimand.

Bonds also hasn’t moved her own bill regarding petition signers. Based on her introduction to the measure, it’s difficult not to conclude one problem at the BOE and with citizen initiatives may be inadequate oversight. She suggested that there was no legal penalty attached to the Home Rule Charter for violations of the law. But Congress authorized jail time and a $10,000 fine.

“We have to rethink the [initiative] process,” said Patrick Mara, chair of the DC GOP, who spoke with me this week as a resident, representing his own views. 

Mark Lee — a longtime community small-business and local nightlife hospitality advocate, and an ardent critic of the effort to eliminate the tipped minimum wage — called the experience with I-82 a “cautionary tale” that also “underscores long-needed reforms in legislating complex policy by voter plebiscite.”

“Surgeons don’t poll family members regarding whether a heart replacement or a repair by stent is advisable, and significant economic policy matters are likewise best left to the review and consideration and decision of elected officials following input by the public, subject experts, and those who are directly affected,” Lee wrote in his email to me. He described the BOE as “an unabashed proponent of voter initiatives instead of a judicious arbiter of the appropriateness of a question,” a procedural failing that has led to “repeated reversal of Board decisions by the courts.”

When Congress granted DC quasi political independence by passing the Home Rule Act of 1973, it provided citizens with the right to recall elected officials, to repeal existing laws through referenda, and to effect citizen initiatives — with the latter giving voters co-existent authority with the DC Council to establish laws. There were caveats: Initiatives could not appropriate funds or result in the appropriation of funds; they also could not negate or limit an act of the legislature. Equally important, the Home Rule Act gave the council the authority to disapprove any initiative passed by voters.

District officials were made to feel guilty when they exercised those latter rights. When the first tipped wage law, Initiative 77, was approved in June 2018, Mendelson persuaded his colleagues to repeal it that October. The same outside group, armed with dark money, mounted the second effort. Under pressure by advocates, Mendelson pledged that he would not push the council to reject it a second time. 

History has proved that agreeing to do so was a huge mistake.

Perhaps the most disastrous initiative has been I-71. Approved in 2015, it led to the legalization of so-called small amounts of marijuana. It opened the door for illegal shops to sell, under dubious circumstances, large amounts of a drug that the federal government continues to classify as illegal. 

Those stores were indisputably at the center of much of the local crime in various neighborhoods, according to police and media reports. The council blamed Congress for not permitting legal retail sales. The legislature twisted itself to try to address the various repercussions, including the reduction in business at legal medical marijuana dispensaries. Eventually, the council approved legislation that permitted residents to self-prescribe, allowing them to secure medical marijuana.

Finally — and notably, in my view, coinciding with the rise of MAGA Republicans who strongly criticized public safety in the city — DC officials began an aggressive but belated campaign to find and close down the illegal shops.

It’s hard to extend praise when it took so long to acknowledge the harm. When damage is occurring, action should be taken immediately. 

Residents who appeared at this week’s council roundtable and those with whom I have spoken want change now — not later. They have suggested that District officials take strong action on multiple items, including the following:

• Ensure that initiative committees are in fact created and managed by DC registered voters, not outsiders.
• Limit dark money influence. Initiatives are different from political candidates where First Amendment rights may be affected, according to some experts. Citizen initiatives are essentially creatures of public policy; therefore, guardrails may be constructed.
• Restore the requirement that those gathering signatures for qualifying petitions for initiatives are actually registered District voters or at the very least verified DC residents.
• Expand the initiative prohibition to cover any measure that would adversely impact the local economy.
• Prohibit anyone who has been found to have violated election laws, whether through the citizen initiative process or through any petition gathering, from participating in such activities for at least a two-year election cycle.

And then there is this — not directly related to initiatives, but no less critical to government integrity: Sandra Seegars, a Ward 8 civic leader, is not the only one perplexed by the candidacy of ex-Councilmember Trayon White Sr. in the forthcoming special election to fill the vacancy caused by his expulsion. Why, Seegars asked Councilmember Bonds, does DC law permit someone who has been removed from the legislature to run for office again so soon?

Why, indeed?

jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.