Excerpts (1˝ minutes total) from speech in Olympia re Judicial Usurpation, 1997
On March 4, 1997, Bob Struble was asked to testify before the Washington State legislature, House Law & Justice Committee. The hearing concerned HB 2060, the Balance of Powers Restoration Act, which would have moved against judicial usurpation. Its chief sponsor was Rep. Kathy Lambert, who has since left the legislature. At this writing she serves as a member of the King County Council.
The killing of the Lambert bill in the legislature and the ruling from the supreme court in Olympia against previously enacted term limits for the state legislature both took place contemporaneously in 1997. A backroom deal or at least an unspoken understanding led directly to the court ruling favorable to incumbency, i.e. overturning the state law on term limits: Or so at least were suspicions (though without proof) about the Lambert bill’s death.
The earlier state term limits law had followed a successful initiative campaign (Initiative 573) led by LIMIT, a Tacoma based political action group. As a member of the steering committee of LIMIT, Struble had contributed some of the law’s language. Approved by the voters in November 1992, the law mandated rotation in office for members of the Washington State Legislature, and also for the state’s delegation to the U.S. Congress. By 1995 the congressional term limits had already fallen to judicial usurpation at the federal level.
Hardly had the 1997 session of the state legislature (and the Lambert bill) ended when the state supreme court overturned the limits on tenure as they applied to the state legislature (William P Gerberding et al v. Ralph Munro et al, 1/08/1998; oral arguments: 10/15/1997). In his dissent, Justice Richard Sanders concluded: “Today, six votes on this court are the undoing of the 1,119,985 votes that Washingtonians cast at the polls in favor of term limits….” Such is the context in which the following testimony took place.
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(2 Minutes)
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