Initiative to boost minimum wage falls short

Monday, July 12, 2004 | 8:56 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- An initiative petition to boost the minimum wage in Nevada by $1 an hour has failed to gain enough signatures to put the question in the ballot, Secretary of State Dean Heller said Friday.

Because of a legal technicality, the petition fell 2,618 signatures short of the required 51,337 names required for an election to amend the Nevada Constitution.

The same legal deficiency may negate the petitions for initiatives involving possession of marijuana and stopping frivolous lawsuits, said Gail Tuzzolo, a consultant who has been working on several of the initiatives and has been following signature counts provided by county clerks.

Another initiative to reduce insurance rates likely will make it to the ballot, based on her counts, Tuzzolo said.

Already, leaders of several of the initiatives are promising to challenge the counts in court, saying they are being held to a standard not used before in counting initiative signatures.

The minimum wage petition, if twice approved by the voters, would have boosted the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour and would have provided for yearly cost-of- living increases.

It was backed by the Nevada State AFL-CIO.

Danny Thompson, head of the Nevada State AFL-CIO, called the decision "ridiculous." He noted that the secretary of state is not saying these are not valid signatures, but instead is citing an alleged technical flaw.

"I view this as Republicans trying to keep wages low," said Thompson, who added that a suit would be filed soon either in Carson City to test the legality of Heller's decision.

Heller said several documents turned in to Clark County Voter Registrar Larry Lomax did not include a valid affidavit signed by a registered voter who had signed that particular document, in addition to the required affidavit by the signature-gatherer. Heller said that is required by the Nevada Constitution and later confirmed in a ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court.

Because they did not meet that requirement, 13,994 minimum wage signatures submitted in Clark County were disqualified.

That meant that the petition did meet the condition that there must be 10 percent of the registered voters signing in 13 of the 17 counties. The only counties where the supporters did not meet the condition were in Clark, Douglas and Esmeralda counties, and in Carson City.

Heller had asked for legal advice from Attorney General Brian Sandoval when the issue of the affidavits arose. The secretary of state said there were possible conflicts between a Nevada Supreme Court decision and a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Victoria Oldenburg replied today to Heller telling him, "It is the recommendation of this office that the secretary adhere to the requirements of the Nevada Constitution."

Heller said, "While I understand that the public signed these petitions in good faith, unfortunately, the requirements of Nevada law were not followed, thus causing 13,000 signatures to be disregarded, rendering the minimum wage petition as insufficient."

Heller said the status of the three other petitions would not be known until today.

Thompson said the minimum wage petition followed the rules on the Nevada secretary of state's Web site. He questioned why other petitions that had followed the same format had not run into the same problem. Heller's office had approved the petition to change the medical malpractice laws, for example, Thompson said.

Tuzzolo said she followed the instructions from the secretary of state on the insurance initiative, frivolous lawsuit initiative and minimum wage initiative.

"If the secretary of state instructs you to do something and you do it exactly the way you're instructed and can prove it, which we can, then you can't be held responsible," she said. "I believe that we still fall within what the Constitution says."

While the initiative to legalize one ounce of marijuana for adults has not yet been ruled invalid, Jennifer Knight, a spokeswoman for the Committee to Control and Regulate Marijuana, said that her group followed the same procedures in gathering signatures as supporters of a marijuana initiative did in 2002.

"The only difference is that they accepted all of our signatures in 2002," she said. "Now they're saying they have a problem, so what changed?"

Knight said she hoped a judge will allow the signatures without proper affidavits to be counted.

"There's no harm done to the state in accepting those, but there's harm done to the citizens in not accepting them," she said.

In a letter dated July 2 sent to the Churchill County Clerk, Republican National Committeeman Joe Brown pointed out that signatures gathered for the frivolous lawsuit initiative and insurance initiative both had legal problems.

The letter is sent on letterhead from Jones Vargas attorneys, though Brown identifies himself as a representative of Nevadans Against Fraud and Higher Insurance Costs.

"We believe this is a Republican-led and an insurance company-led agenda," she said."