Man wants constitutional amendments

PALMER — To hear Mike Coons tell it, the federal government needs to be taken down a peg.

The best way to do that is to change Article V of the U.S. Constitution to put the states on equal footing with the federal government, said Coons, national director for the group Citizens Initiatives. Those changes would force the federal government to consider the wishes of the people, the Palmer man said.

The group is sponsoring something called the “Countermand Amendment,” a constitutional amendment aimed at doing just that.

Some Valley legislators, including constitutional gadfly Wes Keller (R-Wasilla), who has backed Article V resolutions in the past, say they are generally supportive, though Keller said he hadn’t seen the details. Staff for at least two legislators, Rep. Shelley Hughes (R-Palmer) and Alaska Sen. Mike Dunleavy (R-Wasilla) said they were evaluating potential resolution to bring to the floor of the Alaska House of Representatives and Senate when the legislative session opens Jan. 20. Hughes was travelling and unavailable for comment.

The issue boils down to trust, Coons said.

“For one, do you believe that Congress … believe that our Senators and our Congressmen and women, are representing what we want?” he said.

For Coons, the answer is no.

“They get into D.C. and they drink the water,” he said.

The issues Coons said he would most like to see repealed are rallying points for conservative accusations of government overreach: the 1906 Antiquities Act (best known for leading to the National Park System, and a sore point in Alaska, where the federal government remains the largest landowner), and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld a ruling that said a citizen’s initiative passed in Alaska in 1998 prohibiting gay marriage was unconstitutional.

However, the issue is “nonpartisan,” Coons said, based in part on legislators who attend the initiative’s “State Legislators Round Table” radio program. Legislators appearing on the show hail from numerous states, including Hawaii, Coons said.

“We had a really lovely discussion about it with representatives from Hawaii, and they said the thing that Hawaii would probably jump on, once this becomes part of the Constitution, is a lot of the unfunded mandates, that are hurting the state of Hawaii,” he said. “You don’t get much more left than Hawaii.”

For Alaskans — as well as residents of other Western states — the benefits should be clear, Coons said.

“All we need is 30 states to repeal the 1906 Antiquities Act and the Offshore Act, and we would have our land back,” he said. “We’ve got 30 states who would do that.”

“This is the 10th Amendment on steroids,” Coons added.

The 10th Amendment, or “enumerated powers” amendment, is the last in the Bill of Rights. It reserves any powers not listed in the Constitution for the states.

For conservatives, like Coons, the amendment would provide a wedge to dismantle programs like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education, or at least force federal legislators to re-examine the need for them.

It would also force federal legislators to defer to state legislatures, the original intention of the Senate, before the passage of the 17th Amendment, which established the direct election of Senators, according to Coons. U.S. senators were originally intended to report to state legislatures and act on their behalf, Coons said.

The 17th amendment was ratified in part because state-level gridlock over senatorial appointments caused weeks or months of delay, and because state-level political machines resulted in senators widely viewed as puppets, according to the National Archives website. Senators refused to vote on it for several decades, according to the Archives website.

Establishing equal footing between the states and the federal government would allow voters closer contact with the elements of government, Coons said.

“They (state legislators) realize that I’ve got ideas and I’ve got worth,” he said. “Does that mean they always do what I ask them to do? That’s the whole process, isn’t it?”

“I can talk to Shelley Hughes a helluva lot easier than I can talk to (U.S. Rep.) Don Young,” Coons added.

The proposed amendment also would allow the states to eliminate federal gun control restrictions using the 14th Amendment, which ensures equal protection for all citizens under the U.S. Constitution, Coons said. Coincidentally, the 14th Amendment has been most often cited by courts in extending marriage equal rights under the law to gay couples.

Coons said he doesn’t see a contradiction there. Marriage was defined by referendum as being between a man and a woman, and gun ownership rights are specifically enumerated in the Constitution, Coons points out. Gay marriage is neither enumerated nor provided by referendum, he pointed out.

“The judge turned around and said ‘Under the 14th Amendment, gays have these rights,’” he said. “I’m just as adamant. They don’t have them.”

Historically, marriage has been a sacred ritual of “Judeo-Christian morality,” Coons said.

“For a judge to turn around and negate the vote of the people for that, that’s where they stepped across the line,” he said.

Should a future referendum on gay marriage in Alaska pass, Coons said he would be willing to allow it, though he admitted he’s influenced at least in part by personal preference, and “prays like crazy” that won’t happen.

“I’m not a real big fan of the gay community,” he said.

Asked whether segregation, another non-enumerated and non-referenda institution dismantled by judicial writ, should factor into the discussion, Coons disagreed.

“We fought a bloody Civil War to get rid of slavery,” he said. “We spilled a lot of blood in the 1960s to get rid of segregation. I don’t think we’d go back to that.”

It isn’t immediately clear how widespread similar initiatives in other state legislatures are, in part because many state legislatures are in holiday recess at the moment.

A Google search turned up a firebrand opposition piece from an unnamed author on Salon.com, who labeled the movement “a quiet but insane plot to destroy democracy.” There are also several mentions in Tea Party forums and press releases by a group called The Tenth Amendment Center, which advocates for state anullment — the constitutional concept underlying the Countermand Amendment — as a means to fight government overreach.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.