$1.4 BILLION TAX REPEAL REFERENDUM FILED
Let the games begin!
The We Decide
Coalition officially hand-delivered a 50-page referendum petition to the Nevada
Secretary of State’s office in Las Vegas this afternoon calling for an
up-or-down vote by the people of Nevada on SB483.
That bill - passed by the 2015 Nevada Legislature and signed
into law by Gov. Brian Sandoval - represents
the largest tax hike in Nevada history and includes a new gross receipts tax
similar to the one more than 80 percent of Nevadans rejected at the ballot box
just last November.
THAT ought to irritate some liberals and RINOs!
OK, a couple of things you need to know about this effort…
1.) Each individual
name of more than 800 Nevadans who signed the “We Decide Coalition” online petition
sponsored by Citizen Outreach in support of this referendum is listed on the
cover letter submitted with the petition today.
CLICK
HERE
Thank you all!
2.) The language used
to file the petition with the Secretary of State is almost identical to the
language used in successfully filing a separate referendum on a sales tax hike
way back in 1955. CLICK
HERE
If the language was good enough then, it certainly should be
good enough now.
3.) The language of
the petition itself is an EXACT REPLICATION of the language in Senate Bill
483, including the “Description of Effect.”
We didn’t change a word. Not even
a comma. CLICK
HERE
This makes this referendum different from a challenge
Citizen Outreach already has before the Nevada Supreme Court on what has become
“dueling definitions” of the state’s single-subject rule.
In the past, courts have defined the meaning of “single
subject” very broadly for legislation but very narrowly for citizen ballot initiatives.
The only way for the courts to reject this particular
word-for-word referendum as a violation of the single subject rule is to tell
the people of Nevada that they are held to a completely different, thoroughly discriminatory
definition of “single subject” than the people we the people elect.
Good luck with that.
Still, there will undoubtedly be a legal challenge to this
referendum. And there isn’t much sense
in potentially wasting a lot of time, effort and money actually circulating
this petition until the inevitable court challenges are resolved.
So in the meantime, we’re going to wait until a separate tax
repeal referendum, originally proposed by conservative activist Theresa Catalani in Reno, is filed and
urge our supporters to work to get that initiative qualified for the 2016
ballot.
Unlike ours, Catalani’s referendum – being drafted by, among
others, Nevada State Controller Ron
Knecht, former Assemblyman Ed
Goedhart and Las Vegas City Councilman Bob
Beers – will seek to repeal just the new gross receipts “Commerce Tax.”
As such, the language for their petition is considerably
less black-and-white than ours, so they continue to consult with their legal
beagles and the Legislative Counsel Bureau to get it just right before
launching.
I’m told they expect to file sometime in the next two weeks.
When they do, I’m going to encourage everyone in the We
Decide Coalition to work and help qualify their petition as quickly as possible
while ours winds its way through the legal system.
As you know, the wheels of justice grind
slowly, and our existing single subject lawsuit was filed in 2012 and has been
awaiting a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court for well over a year now.
So IF we get a favorable ruling by the courts on this
new referendum, and IF we get it in time to still gather enough
signatures to try to repeal the whole $1.4 billion enchilada, we’ll cross that
bridge when we come to it as far as going out and gathering signatures.
The bottom line: Due to Citizen Outreach’s leading efforts
on behalf of Nevada’s taxpayers, one or more referendums to repeal all or some
of the outrageous tax hikes Sandoval and the Legislature shoved down our
throats this year could well be put on the ballot next year so that we, the
people, will have the final word.
And if you’d consider making a contribution to help us
continue fighting these kinds of fights against the Dark Forces of Big
Government on your behalf, please CLICK HERE
Chuck Muth
President
Citizen Outreach
Nevada’s #1 Irritator of Liberals
P.S. And no, I don’t
care how much he begs me, I will NOT appear on cranky, red-eyed liberal
blogger Jon Ralston’s
taxpayer-subsidized-TV-show to discuss this with him. I’m joining Sens. Harry Reid and Dean Heller
in boycotting Ralston Jive!
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