Initiatives in AZ

We have only eight initiatives in AZ this year. Largely because of incompetence on the part of the man who collected many of these signatures. I've put my analysis of each measure below the fold and would be interested to know if other western are seeing any similarities.

Constitutional Amendments

ANTI-TAX: We have two initiatives that prevent, or inhibit taxing. 100 (an initiative I worked on) says you can't put a transaction tax on selling a home; 105 says that you have to have a majority of registered voters, rather than a majority of those who vote on an initiative, to raise taxes or create a program requiring funding through an initiative. I'm not a fan of these kind of things. Seems like we could better evaluate a tax increase if we had the use of the taxes in front of us; which is exactly why these groups want to make it harder to tax in the abstract rather than when a specific benefit is before the voters.
ANTI-HEALTH CARE (101): Even more stupid than anti-tax, this measure is an effort to vote against state sponsored health care programs in the abstract, with no state sponsored program on the table.
ANTI-GAY PEOPLE (102): I hate these. It is already illegal for gay people to marry, but the hate-based community isn't happy with that.

Changes to Law Proposed by Citizens (or well financed special interests depending on your perspective).

These are really tricky, and frankly demonstrate the problem with legislating this way. I just read the text of each initiative and here's what they do:
ALLOW BUT LIMIT PAY DAY LOANS (200): There are some moves a foot to make PAYDAY LOANS illegal. This preempts that, but at the same time puts some controls in place on pay day loans.
MAKE IT EASIER TO SUE HOMEBUILDERS (201): This basically shifts the balance of several litigation issues such as attorney's fees and standing to be more friendly to the plaintiff.
WEAKEN EMPLOYER SANCTION LAWS (202): This attempts to "fix" the employer sanction law by protecting mistakes.

So each of these tweak legislation. I'm inclined to vote against them on principle. Take Pay day loans. For many who use them, if you eliminate Pay Day loans they aren't going to finance that debt with a low interest credit card. They'll overdraft their account.

Changes from the Legislature:
Prop 300 increases legislators pay form $24,000 to $30,000 a year. No brainer. How can we pay these people so little. It's stupid.