Your 2016 Massachusetts ballot might turn out to be a crowded one, after Attorney General Maura Healey signed off Wednesday on almost two dozen ballot questions that could be headed for public approval when voters go to the polls in 2016.
Healey certified that 22 potential ballot initiatives meet the constitutional standards for appearing on the ballot, setting up several proposals that could develop into big campaigns for 2016.
Voters could get a chance to decide on a change to the income tax rate where people who make over $1 million a year would be taxed at a higher rate on the amount over $1 million, with the additional state revenue dedicated to education and transportation.
“What this ballot question would do is require anyone in Massachusetts who makes more than a million dollars a year — and that’s not many people — to pay an additional four percentage points on their income tax, and that money would be dedicated to improving our public school sour roads and bridges and our public transportation,” Steve Crawford, a spokesman for the group Raise Up Massachusetts, told WGBH News Wednesday.
Expect resistance to the million-makers’ tax from the anti-tax increase crusaders at Citizens for Limited Taxation, the group that’s been fighting any kind of graduated income tax in Massachusetts for decades. Though Healey’s sign-off certifies that the question’s language meets the requirements set out in the state constitution for initiatives, opponents could still argue that it violates certain provisions of the constitutions itself.
There are also questions on marijuana legalization that would pit two very different policies against each other: one question would fully legalize the drug for those over — with few regulatory strings attached — while another would legalize and heavily tax it just like we do now with booze.
Jim Borghesani from the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol doesn’t see the two measures coming into conflict until much further down the road.
“It’s not a complication until both ballot measures actually make the ballot,” Borghesani said. “So I think that question is better asked when we know who has been successful in collecting the required amount of signatures, which is a tall task.”
But the Georgetown, Mass., attorney behind the competing initiative, Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition founder Stephen Epstein, says he won’t back down in the face of the less radical proposal. Epstein wants to wait and see which proposal gains more traction with voters before election day.
“If I were them, and we’re polling as well as they are, to save face nationally, they better jump on our bandwagon,” Epstein said.
Even so, it’s unlikely both questions could co-exist on the 2016 ballot recommending different marijuana policies.
Healey rejected several potential ballot initiatives, mostly on constitutional grounds. These include questions on limiting political spending, radiation health risks and government accountability.
Another victim of Healey’s decisions is the burgeoning campaign to legalize fireworks and sparklers in the state. The petition from former Gardner Rep. Richard Bastien turned out to be a dud in Healey’s eyes because it covered too much policy ground. Bastien’s petition not only loosened restrictions on fireworks, it would have rewritten the state’s law on how all explosives could be transported. Healey ruled that the transportation topic was not associated closely enough to the main topic of fireworks, so the petition didn’t meet the definition of a proper ballot question.
“Obviously, [I] disagree with today’s decision to not certify our petition,” Bastien told WGBH News in an email. “Our position is that all of the provisions are germane and necessary to legalizing consumer fireworks.”
Campaigns behind the questions will have to gather over 75,000 more signatures in order to secure a place on the 2016 ballot.
