(Chuck Muth, Citizen Outreach) – I’m gonna give you just a quick update because the whole family and some of the kids’ friends drove up to Carson City yesterday and we’re heading out to the pumpkin patch at Lattin Farms in Fallon this morning…
1.) Despite Judge Jerry Wiese of the 8th Judicial Court in Clark County hearing our initial challenge to the single subject law three years ago, he changed his mind this week and granted the tax-hikers’ lawyers’ change-of-venue request to kick our current lawsuit up to the 1st Judicial Court in Carson City – where citizen ballot initiatives go to die.
No idea why the change of heart, but it might have had something to do with the fact that the Nevada Supreme Court overturned part of his decision in the first case and he just took the opportunity to toss this hot potato into someone else’s lap.
2.) As most of you know, while our team is focusing on efforts to repeal the entire $1.4 billion tax hike Gov. Brian Sandoval and the RINOs shoved down our throats a couple months ago, conservative State Controller Ron Knecht has filed a referendum to repeal jut the new “commerce tax” part of the largest tax hike in Nevada history.
While the tax-hikers’ lawyers have argued that our referendum on the entire SB483 bill is a violation of the single-subject law, Mr. Knecht’s referendum is just on the single subject of the “commerce tax.”
So surely the lawyers wouldn’t have a problem with THAT, right?
Wrong.
Yesterday, they filed a lawsuit to block the Knecht referendum, too.
I’m sick of legal papers these days and haven’t read this new lawsuit yet, but according to an article by Geoff Dornan of the Nevada Appeal in today’s paper, the Coalition for Nevada’s Future PAC claims Mr. Knecht’s referendum does pretty much everything bad except cause cancer and dandruff.
The lawsuit argues that the people don’t have “the authority to repeal a law that provides the state with revenue if such a repeal would result in state expenditures that exceed state revenue.”
Um, then maybe the Legislature shouldn’t have passed a budget that exceeded existing state revenue in the first place. Then this wouldn’t be necessary.
“The people cannot propose, by referenda, a measure that would create a budget deficit,” the lawyers claim in their brief, despite the right to petition our government by referendum being right there in the Nevada Constitution.
And again, the only reason there would be a budget deficit is because the governor and Legislature passed a budget that greatly exceeded the level of existing taxation that was in place before the session started last February.
It was the governor and Legislature that raised taxes; now the people are simply trying to vote on them. Which, of course, the tax hikers hate because they know the people will vote “no” if given the choice.
So, the only way to keep the tax hikes in place is to deny the people their right to vote on them. Thus, yesterday’s lawsuit even though Mr. Knecht’s referendum only would affect about $121 million of the giganormous $1.4 billion tax hike.
I expect to see Controller Knecht at tomorrow’s pancake breakfast at the Governor’s Mansion and will let you all know how he and his team plan to proceed after speaking with him.
Happy Nevada Day!
Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and the publisher of www.NevadaNewsandViews.com. He personally blogs at www.MuthsTruths.com.
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