Recall of Gates gets new life

Tuesday, June 2, 1998 | 9:41 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A district judge has allowed state and county workers to start checking all 7,474 names on a petition to recall Clark County Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates.

District Judge Michael Fondi on Monday lifted a temporary stay so that Secretary of State Dean Heller could start checking whether enough valid signatures exist to force a recall election.

Fondi said that completing the work would do no "irreparable harm" to Gates and that Heller was acting consistently with state law outlining the appeals procedure.

Donald Reis, chief deputy secretary of state, said the verification process would begin today or Wednesday. Reis hoped the verification could be wrapped up by June 12, when another hearing has been scheduled to decide whether Heller had statutory authority to check each signature.

Aviva Gordon, a lawyer for Gates who had obtained a temporary stay Friday, said she wouldn't know until she had talked to Gates whether she would appeal Fondi's decision to the Nevada Supreme Court.

Gates said she would not go to the Supreme Court but let the process play itself out.

"I'm surprised by the whole thing because the secretary of state clearly didn't have the jurisdiction to do what he did," Gates said. "It's unfortunate because the taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill for all this stuff."

The cost for county staff time alone is estimated at $60,000.

Heller ruled that the recall petition had failed after a random sample of 503 signatures came up 49 valid signatures short of the 293 needed to trigger a special election.

But the recall group, Citizens for Honest and Responsible Government, appealed the decision on the basis that the recall count was unconstitutional, that Registrar of Voters Kathryn Ferguson had an inherent conflict of interest and that the group was not allowed access to the verification process.

The appeal opened an untested area of state law. It is the first time since the law was enacted in 1993 that a decision to fail a petition was challenged.

Heller said he wanted to verify all the signatures to instill confidence in the random-sample process.

But Gordon argued that nothing in the appeal asks for every signature to be verified. She also said Heller violated state law by calling for the full count.

The petition needs 4,380 valid signatures to trigger a special election.

Gordon said Heller could order verification of all the signatures only if 90 percent to 100 percent of the sampled signatures were found to be valid. The number of signatures found to be valid was lower than 90 percent, so Heller has no authority to order a full count, Gordon said.

In addition, Gordon said, the 1,858 signatures collected by 16 people who were not registered voters should be rejected. Another 274 signatures were from people who later asked that their names be withdrawn from the petition, she said.

Deputy Attorney General Kateri Cavin successfully argued that Heller was in the middle of his signature investigation and a stay order could not be issued. She said that a stay may be issued only on a final ruling and that Heller should be allowed to proceed.

Furthermore, Cavin said, there was no showing that Gates is being harmed by the verification going forward and that the county commissioner can launch two legal challenges if Heller finds enough signatures to merit a recall election.