In his address to the Legislature two weeks ago, Governor Larry Rhoden told legislators he “would love it if” House Bill 1044, the Rural Health Transformation Plan, “was the first bill that reaches my desk.” But the debatable $189-million consolation prize for Trump’s much larger cuts to Medicaid only cleared the House Monday. The first bill heading for Rhoden’s desk is Senate Bill 5, Senator Michael Rohl’s (R-1/Aberdeen) plan to indicate on our ballots whether ballot questions were proposed by citizens or by the Legislature.
While HB 1044 got scaled back in funding authority and timeframe by Joint Appropriations and has received a handful of mugwump nays, SB 5 got everyone’s vote except Rep. Lana Greenfield‘s (R-22/Doland), who cast her lone objection without offering any response to House prime sponsor Rep. Chris Kassin’s (R-17/Vermillion) brief House floor pitch. Rep. Kassin said SB 5 is simply trying to make voters “the most informed electorate when they go to vote.” No one else rose to speak to the bill.
I am surprised not only that the first bill to clear the 2026 Legislature deals with my favorite topic, ballot measures, but that the Republican-dominated Legislature acted so fast on a ballot-measure bill that does not harm the people’s right to initiative and referendum. Telling voters whether a constitutional amendment comes from the Legislature or from the people may actually help protect that right. Voters tend to do a good job of reading and understanding the import of ballot measures, but a label on the ballot saying “Proposed by the Legislature” may help warn voters that the proposed measure, as demonstrated by recent proposed constitutional amendments, is more likely to restrict their rights than expand them.
Technical note: While SB 5 will label all ballot measures with their “place of origin”, it really only offers new information for constitutional amendments. Voters already know that initiated laws come to them from citizens, not the Legislature, and referred laws are products of the Legislature that citizens have paused to put to a public vote. The fact that no one in either chamber spoke up to remove this redundancy and focus SB 5 only on constitutional amendments, which may originate with citizens or the Legislature, suggests how little most legislators truly appreciate the initiative and referendum process.