Mining initiative proponents eviscerate industry complaints in legal brief

Thursday, March 8, 2012 | 8:30 p.m.

The Nevada Mining Association is making improper, irrelevant and meritless claims in an attempt to stop voters from making their positions known on an initiative designed to raise the taxation cap on the industry, a legal brief filed by the proponents argues.

The brief, crafted by attorney Maggie McLetchie, who is representing Nevadans United for Fair Mining Taxes (a k a businessman Monte Miller), contains unusually strong and pointed language to rebut the industry's attempts to defeat the petition drive before it gets started. The brief accuses the NMA of "grasping at straws" to stop the initiative and describes the industry lawsuit as "nothing more than an attempt to interfere with Proponents' rights to circulate an initiative petition, and the voters' rights to use the initiative process to change law...The NMA's transparent attempt to delay the process of allowing voters to make up their minds about it should not be indulged."

Sounds about right.

The rest of the brief, posted at right, is a methodical, legal destruction of the NMA's case, which uses similar techniques (alleged violations of the "single-subject rule" and a murky "description of of effect") as have been successfully employed by major special interests to knock down threats to their bottom lines.