Kent petition drive can start for low-enforcement marijuana offenses initiative

Let the marijuana petition drive begin.

Sensible Washington, which filed an initiative last month with the city of Kent to let voters decide whether the city should make marijuana offenses the lowest enforcement priority by Kent Police, received the go-ahead from Kent City Attorney Tom Brubaker to start to collect signatures.

Brubaker told the group in a letter that they are “free to prepare, format and circulate your petition at any time.”

The initiative would “make the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of non-violent marijuana offenses, where the marijuana was intended for adult personal use, the lowest law enforcement priority.”

Initially, it appeared based on Kent City Code that the group would need to go through several steps before collecting signatures from Kent voters.

Brubaker, however, determined the city code needs to be changed when it comes to petitions in order to fall in line with the state petition process.

“Our code has extra steps in the petition process that are not consistent with the state code,” said Brubaker during a phone interview Tuesday. “We had not looked at it in years because we had no petitions sent to us.”

Brubaker will present an amended city ordinance about initiatives to the City Council at its April 17 meeting.

“We’ll present a similar ordinance that follows the process authorized by state law,” Brubaker said.

Brubaker sent a letter to Sensible Washington to let it know about the change.

“The net effect of these changes will be to simplify the process for initiative and referendum petitioners,” Brubaker wrote. “For example, petitioners will no longer be required to file initial petition copies with the city clerk, the city attorney will not be required to prepare an initiative statement and petitioners will not be required to submit their petitions within any specific time frames.”

City code currently requires the city attorney to review the initiative and within 14 days from the filing date to formulate an impartial statement that describes the purpose of the initiative.

“Giving the city a chance to rewrite seemed wrong to me,” Brubaker said.

No one has presented an initiative to the city since supporters of a juvenile curfew in 1997, Brubaker said. The council ended up passing a curfew ordinance and voters never considered the proposal.

Sensible Washington, however, plans to make sure the marijuana petition goes to a vote of the residents. The group will need approximately 7,500 valid signatures of registered voters to get the measure to a vote.

“We feel very strongly in the base of volunteers and support that we have from the city of Kent,” said Anthony Martinelli, a spokesman for Sensible Washington, in an email. “Kent is certainly an ambitious city (likely requiring around 15,000 signatures when all is said and done to assure the valid total of approximately 7,500) but we have confidence in our ability to gather the proper signatures to put this on this November’s general election ballot.

“Once on the ballot we will run an election campaign in the city, and as well have full confidence that the voters of Kent are ready for reform, and will vote yes.”

Petitions collected would be given to the city of Kent which would then send the signatures to King County for verification. If enough valid signatures are collected, the city council would come up with the ballot question and present the initiative for an election.

Sensible Washington filed similar initiatives in the last couple of weeks in Olympia, Bremerton, Everett, Bellingham and Spokane. Voters in Seattle passed a low-enforcement of marijuana offenses measure in 2003. Tacoma voters passed similar legislation last year.

Group leaders have not yet said when they might start collecting signatures in Kent.