Court rejects property tax restraint petition

By Cy Ryan

Published Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008 | 3:59 p.m.

Updated Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008 | 4:08 p.m.

CARSON CITY -– A proposed initiative petition to put a limit on raising the property tax won’t be on the election ballot this November.

The Nevada Supreme Court has denied motions by former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle of Reno to advance her petition to amend the state constitution.

Secretary of State Ross Miller applauded the quick decision by the Supreme Court and said allowing it on the ballot would have been “disastrous.” Absentee ballots have already been printed and mailed to the military personnel serving overseas and outside Nevada. Permitting the petition to advance would have required re-printing of the ballot.

“The election can go forward uninterrupted,” Miller said after the court issued its decision today.

Angle said she was “just as amazed” at the Supreme Court decision as she was at the ruling of Senior District Judge Charles McGee who held the petition had defects. She said McGee used a small technical error in one county to “disenfranchise 83,000 voters” who signed the petition to limit property taxes.

Angle said she would meet with her attorney to determine what course of action to pursue.

After the McGee ruling, Angle and her group We The People of Nevada appealed to the Supreme Court. They said McGee should have been disqualified in deciding the case because his wife works for the Washoe County School District. The Nevada State Education Association, a union of school teachers, had opposed the petition and filed the suit to have it disqualified.

The Supreme Court found that McGee’s wife retired five years from the school district and serves as a reading consultant for a few hours each month. It said, “Therefore, her actions result in no more than a de minimis interest that in no sense could warrant disqualification.”

The court did not hear oral arguments but said those who circulated the initiative petition did not follow the law. The circulators never completed an affidavit on each page that the person signing the petition was given a chance to read and review the full text.

The decision said, “There is no assurance that the signers were afforded the opportunity to ready what they were signing.”

“For over 2,500 signatures, the affidavit was completely blank, and for another 11,000 signatures, the affidavit was unsigned,” said the six justices on the court. Justice William Maupin disqualified himself because he had some dealing with the lawyers Michael Dyer and James Penrose who represented the school teachers.

The initiative petition required 58,628 signatures of registered voters to qualify for the ballot.

The court said, “Those affidavits that were completed attested to the required statutory elements only for the signatures on that one page, which at most only contained seven signatures.”

Lynn Warne, president of the education association, said she was thrilled by the decision. The ruling by the court "confirms" that there were "serious deficiencies" in the petition and the affidavits.

Warne said those shortcomings meant the petition did not have the sufficient signatures.

In rejecting the appeal, the court said We The People “has not demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on its argument that it substantially complied with” the election law and the law on gathering signatures for initiative petitions.

The organization also complained that the requirement on the affidavits was unconstitutional. But the court said it had decided the validity of the law only a few weeks previously.

Angle had tried several times in the past to get the issue before the voters but has come up short. The petition would limit property taxes to 1 percent of the base value of the property pegged to the fiscal 2003-2004 value. When the property would be sold the base value would be increased annually only by 2 percent or inflation, whichever was smaller.

Nevada law presently limits property taxes for homeowners to increasing 3 percent a year and for businesses at 8 percent annually.

Cy Ryan may be reached at (775) 687 5032 or [email protected].