Last week’s Wednesday Journal editorial in Viewpoints, titled “Referendum overreach,” deserves a vigorous rebuttal. On Election Day, 85% of Oak Park voters voted in favor of establishing an initiative and referendum process in our village. The people of Oak Park spoke definitively.
The editorial derided this voter referendum as merely a “sugar-candy” mechanism designed to strip power from the village board. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Oak Park Voter Initiative is not about sidelining the village board or upending thoughtful governance. The voter initiative is about offering the residents of our community a structured way to discuss vital issues when they are not addressed. If the village board finds itself out of step with the views of the people of Oak Park, initiative powers enable the public to act — another tool in the toolbox of democracy.
If the election of Nov. 5 should teach us anything, it is that our democracy needs additional improvements and protections.
Last week’s editorial tried to paint the initiative process as new and radical. In fact, Oak Park is the exception, and not the rule, in not granting its residents the powers of initiative and referendum.
The people of every municipality in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and dozens of other states, already have the power of initiative and referendum for local ordinances. Are these voters somehow more enlightened or capable of democratic self-governance than Oak Parkers?
I urge Oak Parkers to reach out to our village board trustees to support the Oak Park Voter Initiative as an overwhelming 85% of Oak Park voters did on Nov. 5. While the editorial board may dismiss the more than 22,000 Oak Parkers who voted for the initiative process as “gullible,” I know our village trustees will not make that same mistake.
Instead, I am confident that the board will see that the initiative and referendum process will strengthen, not undermine, our local governance. Please join me in winning passage of the Oak Park Voter Initiative.
Jacob Drews
Oak Park