Alaskans have a powerful tool at their disposal to create new laws by initiative. Through ballot initiatives, voters can, with sufficient numbers, create law just as the Legislature does. But recent elections demonstrated to some that voters may not realize who is funding massive media buys to curry their support pro or con.

Rep. Kyle Johansen, a Ketchikan Republican and House majority leader, is among those who believe voters deserve accountability and openness from both sides to ballot initiatives that, if approved in an election, become ingrained in state law.

That's a more thorough, thoughtful process than the present one, in which voters are sometimes wooed with expensive, glossy advertising, TV ads targeted to play on emotions, and no knowledge of who is funding those campaigns to sway public opinion.

Think back to 2008 and the onslaught of high-quality TV ads weaving the Clean Water Act with the proposed Pebble Mine and the future of one of the world's greatest salmon habitats. Alaskans watched faces of neighbors, miners, protesting the act, and watched the faces of other neighbors, some Bristol Bay residents, citing the potential for development to destroy a way of life.

Who paid for those ads -- and how much money was at play influencing voters?

A year later, some of those questions were answered after charges were brought against initiative backers for failing to register as a group right away, and for trying to hide around $2 million contributed to the cause. The first charge was dismissed by the Alaska Public Offices Commission, while the funding complaint remains under consideration.

And that's the problem with the way initiatives are managed, Johansen said. Voters need to know, from the start, who is paying how much to have their way.

"We don't know who or how much money is being spent from the very beginning," Johansen said. He introduced a bill last session to make the process more transparent, and is optimistic he can push the legislation through to law this year.

Just as people running for office must document each penny in and each penny out, so should the initiative process, Johansen said, calling initiatives an important part of Alaska's constitution.

"I don't care if it's money coming from the Sierra Club, from energy (interests), from nonprofits or individuals," he said. "Everyone needs to disclose, across the board, no exceptions."

For him, the impetus was a frustration at the lack of accountability in recent ballot initiatives -- specifically, who was spending money, lots of it, to influence voters in the 2006 measure on cruise ship taxes and the 2008 all-out fight over the Pebble Mine, thinly guised as the Clean Water Initiative.

In both cases, millions went to expensive advertising campaigns that claimed to educate voters, but really promoted one side or the other.

For Johansen, that illuminated a glaring problem with the process.

"We have no idea during a signature-gathering campaign if a group out of Tennessee is driving Alaska statute with money," he said. "We need to know where every single dime comes from."

Johansen's House Bill 36 cut through two House committees before landing in Finance, where he hopes for a speedy hearing when lawmakers return to business Jan. 19 in Juneau.

"We'll see how the conversation goes in Finance," he said. "I've gotten a lot of good feedback from many of my colleagues -- I'm pretty confident it will get passed."

Once Finance gives a go-ahead, the bill would have to meet approval from the entire House, then weave through a series of committee hearings in the Senate, followed by a floor vote in that body.

If the proposal becomes law, it wouldn't affect current ballot measures -- the most visible, perhaps, being a drive to require parental consent for teens seeking abortion.

"There's absolutely no intent to slow down or make the process more difficult," Johansen said. "There's a balance, and the public's right to know who is funding these (initiatives) is important."

Alaskans want that clarity, Johansen said, citing in a statement supporting his House Bill 36 the overwhelming voter support for a 2006 ethics act that netted greater insight into where lawmakers' campaign donations come from. House Bill 36 seeks to offer similar openness to the citizen initiative process.