There’s a small bomb in the Greater Des Moines Partnership’s quality-of-life legislative priorities for 2006. Like the Partnership, we support renewal of the Vision Iowa program, which encourages public-private partnerships to make Iowa more livable, more recreational trails, more cultural and entertainment districts and increases in hotel-motel taxes to pay for amenities that make Iowa communities more attractive.

But we break ranks with the business development group on a proposal that would eliminate the requirement that voters reauthorize casino gambling in their counties every eight years. Tinkering with a right as fundamental to American citizenship as voting should be done rarely and only in response to a significant problem. The reason for the Partnership’s proposal is somewhat elusive.

Though the group warns that the law requiring reapproval of the original authorization significantly inhibits long-term planning and financing of capital improvement projects at gambling establishments, the basis for lobbying appears to be rooted more in fear than historical fact. There’s little evidence that gambling renewal referendums are difficult to pass. For example, in 2002, Polk County voters approved the measure reauthorizing casino gambling at Prairie Meadows Racetrack & Casino by a comfortable margin of 2-to-1. Where’s the problem?

Referendums can be tricky. They can become farces, attracting people who feel strongly on one side or the other of an issue, but largely ignored by people in the ambivalent middle. It’s easy for special interests to sway the outcome of such votes. But that’s not a good enough reason to restrict or eliminate voters’ say on an issue.

Instead, the onus is on those who believe in the economic importance of Prairie Meadows and other gaming establishments to make their case to voters and convince them of the merits of their arguments, just as those opposed to gambling will warn of social costs and other perceived ills. Both sides should be heard. That’s how democracy works.

Despite the entrenchment of gambling in Iowa, it’s still a volatile issue in the state. Perhaps one day the pendulum will shift, as it has on so many other social issues, and gambling will be rejected as an economic development cure-all on the grounds that it harms some of the state’s most economically vulnerable citizens. Iowans may decide that millions of dollars in public investments are outweighed by gambling’s social costs.

Let’s not make a pre-emptive strike now that would prohibit voters from saying that in the future.