{"id":2302,"date":"2024-09-07T23:20:29","date_gmt":"2024-09-08T03:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/?p=2302"},"modified":"2024-09-08T23:23:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T03:23:35","slug":"constitutional-conventions-benefits-outweigh-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/?p=2302","title":{"rendered":"Constitutional convention’s benefits outweigh cost\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Many have correctly said that Donald Trump has weird obsessions with crowd sizes and other matters. Well, Rhode Island government has a weird obsession with constitutional convention costs, albeit one that merely mimics the talking points of convention opponents who oppose a \u201cyes\u201d vote on Rhode Island\u2019s Nov. 5 referendum on whether to call a convention.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts who do serious public policy analysis usually try to explicitly balance the potential benefits and costs of a proposed policy. But that\u2019s not how Rhode Island\u2019s legislature, via its appointed and constitutionally mandated \u201cpreparatory commission,\u201d has framed the problem. The same goes for the secretary of state, who is responsible for summarizing the convention referendum in a voter handbook mailed at taxpayer expense to all registered voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their 2004 and 2014 reports to Rhode Island\u2019s people, the last two preparatory commissions quantified the potential costs but not benefits of a convention. Rhode Island\u2019s secretary of state then mimicked that type of biased analysis in his ballot summary mailed to all Rhode Island voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government\u2019s cost findings were then ubiquitously cited in the media and, most influentially, cited in the \u201cno\u201d side\u2019s pervasive advertising in the weeks before the referendum. The message was: if a convention has only costs and risks, only a fool would vote for one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t object to the government\u2019s attempt to quantify a convention\u2019s potential costs if it makes a similar attempt to quantify its potential benefits. For example, the state\u2019s budget for the 2025 fiscal year, excluding local government, is $14 billion<\/a>, which translates to $140 billion over the 10-year budgeting cycle between convention calls. This should raise the question: what is a convention\u2019s break-even point if it reduces government waste? For example, how much waste could a truly independent inspector general eliminate?  (The legislature has repeatedly refused to create such an inspector general.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using the current preparatory commission\u2019s heroic assumptions to arrive at a top $4.8 million cost for a convention, that would imply a convention break-even cost of just .000034%. Thus, if a convention\u2019s efforts at improving democratic accountability reduced government waste by just .1%\/year, that would result in a 292 times (29,200%) return on investment. And this, mind you, when the Gallup poll has found that Americans think their state governments waste 42% of every dollar spent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019s the strategy used to justify discounting a convention\u2019s potential benefits? The primary one is the claim that the legislature can do everything a convention can without those costs. But this is a bald-faced distortion of both the convention\u2019s democratic design and purpose since Massachusetts pioneered the first convention in 1779. This convention featured independently elected convention delegates to propose constitutional changes followed by popular ratification because the people recognized their legislature would have a blatant conflict of interest designing its own powers and those of competing branches of government. This argument was so compelling that Congress soon mandated conventions for all new states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in the current era of constitutional amendment rather than inauguration, the convention process remains, in most states, the legal gold standard for constitutional change-making. To take the extreme example, New Hampshire, which had 10 unlimited conventions during the 20th century, wouldn\u2019t even allow the legislature to propose constitutional amendments until 1964. U.S. states have held 236 conventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As evidenced by a 2023\u00a0University of Rhode Island poll<\/a>\u00a0that found only 10% of Rhode Islanders had a lot or great deal of trust in the state legislature, there remains a compelling reason for this institution, which, like the popular initiative available in 24 states, prevents the legislature from having monopoly power over constitutional change proposals. The preparatory commission\u2019s just-released 2024 report has once again studiously ignored this legislature bypass purpose of a convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the legislature\u2019s taxpayer-funded obsession with a constitution\u2019s cost should be called out as not only weird but biased to preserve its power at the people\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.H. Snider is the editor of\u00a0The Rhode Island State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: <\/strong>Snider, J.H.,\u00a0Constitutional convention\u2019s benefits outweigh cost<\/a>, Providence Journal, Sept. 7, 2024. A copy of the article as published in the print edition can be found\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many have correctly said that Donald Trump has weird obsessions with crowd sizes and other matters. Well, Rhode Island government has a weird obsession with constitutional convention costs, albeit one that merely mimics the talking points of convention opponents who oppose a \u201cyes\u201d vote on Rhode Island\u2019s Nov. 5 referendum on whether to call a convention. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2303,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302\/revisions\/2303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}