Wednesday, July 7, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- The legality of the initiative petition to raise the minimum wage in Nevada by $1 is in doubt and there are questions about three other initiatives to amend the Nevada Constitution, according to the secretary of state's office.
Renee L. Parker, chief deputy secretary of state, on Tuesday asked Attorney General Brian Sandoval for legal advice and suggested a suit be filed to clear up the issues regarding signatures on the minimum-wage petition.
Parker said there are 13,994 signatures in doubt on the petition to boost the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour and to raise it annually according to the cost of living. If those signatures were declared invalid, the petition would fall 2,419 signatures short of qualifying for the ballot.
Parker, in her letter to the attorney general, said Clark County Voter Registrar Larry Lomax discovered a potential procedural deficiency in the minimum wage petition circulated in Southern Nevada.
Some of the petitions lacked an affidavit from a petition signer, attesting that the signatures on the petition were genuine.
It's a confusing point of law. Petition gatherers sign an affidavit that says the gatherer witnessed the signatures and believes them to be valid. Lomax said the law also asks that one of the people who signed the petition do the same thing.
Lomax said he found the problem in initiatives involving the legalization of marijuana, frivolous lawsuits and insurance rate reductions, but he was unsure if it would put the signatures in jeopardy of not qualifying.
"It's only a problem if it brings it down below the threshold," he said.
Gail Tuzzolo, a spokeswoman for the minimum wage initiative, said she has circulated petitions before and was never asked to meet this standard before.
"I believe there's a couple on the ballot right now that were just qualified that weren't put up to that standard," she said.
Tuzzolo said her group followed the instructions in Nevada statute and from the Secretary of State.
"The requirement that we supposedly didn't follow was written in the constitution," she said.
Tuzzolo, who said she has worked as a consultant to initiative drives for more than eight years, said she used the same methods in the two initiatives that aim to reduce insurance rates and cut back on frivolous lawsuits.
But she said she has not yet been notified if those initiatives might be in danger of qualifying.
In addition to the two insurance initiatives, another petition that would allow adults to legally purchase up to one ounce of marijuana also is scheduled to be verified by Friday.
Two initiatives already have qualified for the ballot. One would require the Legislature to pass the education budget before other budgets. The other would require the state to fund education at or above the national average by 2012.
While Tuzzolo said she thinks the initiative is receiving unfair extra scrutiny, she said she has "no reason to believe it's anything but just someone interpreting it differently than everyone else."
The group, she said, will appeal the decision if the signatures are thrown out, partly because of a prior U.S. Supreme Court case that she said could serve as a precedent to keep the signatures.
"The law is clearly on our side," she said.
Parker said rulings from the Nevada Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court put this issue in doubt. If the state follows the Nevada ruling, the minimum wage petition would not have enough signatures to qualify for the election ballot in November.
She said before declaring the petition insufficient, the attorney general should provide legal advice, hopefully by Friday.
Lomax said the same issue affects the other petitions but the verification of the signatures on those documents is not due until July 9.
"This is a recurring issue affecting several petitions, and we have received actual notice that we will face legal challenges regardless of our determination on this issue," Parker said.
"Accordingly, we believe it would be in the best interests of the citizens of Nevada to seek some sort of court resolution of this issue because further delays could have an adverse impact on election preparation and defending multiple legal challenges in various jurisdictions risks the potential for inconsistent decisions, would be time consuming and would substantially strain the resources of both our offices."
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