Challenges need limit.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Common sense suggests that there should be a limit on how far back a lawsuit challenging a voter-passed initiative can reach. But does the law itself dictate a limit? That's the question now before the Oregon Supreme Court. The court's decision - expected in about six months - will go a long way toward clearing up a big uncertainty in the state's election law.

The lawsuit bringing the high court into the legal fray is a challenge against the Oregon Lottery by Oregonians for Gambling Awareness, an anti-gambling organization. The state's voters approved the lottery in 1984. The OGA claims in its suit that the 1984 ballot measure violated a rule that prohibits initiatives from proposing to change more than one part of the state constitution at a time. Marion County Circuit Judge Paul Lipscomb dismissed the OGA's lawsuit last year, saying that the statute of limitations required that challenges be filed within 10 years of an initiative's passage.

The OGA appealed, and the Oregon treasurer's office asked the Supreme Court to take the appeal directly because of uncertainty over the state's ability to borrow money based on future income from the lottery. The high court agreed last week to take the case, bypassing the Oregon Court of Appeals.

The challenge to the lottery gained immediacy after the successful challenge earlier this year to a 1992 voter-approved initiative establishing term limits for legislators, Oregon members of Congress and statewide officials. That lawsuit also claimed that the initiative violated the one-amendment-at-a-time rule. The Oregon Supreme Court agreed. The difference between the two lawsuits is mainly one of years - that is, the number of years challenges to initiatives can reach back. For the challenge to term limits, the reach was 10 years. In the lottery case, it would be 18 years.

Oregon desperately needs clarity on this question. If the Supreme Court lets stand an 18-year-old challenge to a successful initiative, could another challenge reach back 20 years, 30 years, or even 100 years? The latter isn't out of the question - a lawsuit currently working its way through the legal system seeks to overturn a 1910 decision by voters to, among other things, create the Oregon Court of Appeals.

While some might see a 10-year limit as arbitrary, such a rule would parallel the statute of limitations. More importantly, it would create solid ground beneath important and long-settled provisions of state law. Ground rules for challenging voter-approved ballot measures are needed, and only the Oregon Supreme Court can provide them. Everyone - initiative proponents and opponents alike - deserves to know know the legal shelf life of challenges to initiatives under the one-amendment-at-a-time standard.