Insisting the trial judge got it wrong, Secretary of State Ken Bennett decided Monday to ask the Arizona Supreme Court to keep the sales tax initiative off the November ballot.
And he has hired an expert in elections law to make his case.
Bennett said organizers of the Quality Jobs and Education campaign did not comply with the constitutional and statutory requirements for filing initiatives. He said that left him no choice but to conclude it could not go to voters.
But Ann-Eve Pedersen, who is spearheading the initiative, said Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Oberbillig was correct in his ruling last week that Bennett was being "arbitrary” in rejecting petitions with 290,000 names because of what the judge called a "photocopy error.”
In some ways, Bennett’s decision is a surprise.
In an op-ed piece nearly two weeks ago in the Arizona Daily Star, Bennett wrote that if the trial judge ruled in favor of initiative organizers "our office will complete our work and place the measure on the ballot.”
But Bennett said Monday that it would be negligent of him to let Oberbillig's ruling, issued Friday, to stand.
"To leave the lower court ruling in place I think risks huge voter confusion, huge confusion with our offices and other filing offices as far as how we're supposed to process these initiatives,” he told Capitol Media Services. But there clearly also is an issue that Bennett thinks Oberbillig was unfair.
"We believe very strongly that we followed the law precisely,” he said. "And it's frustrating to have in response a ruling that says we were arbitrary and didn't perform our duties.”
Last week Bennett's office was represented solely by the Attorney General's Office. This week Bennett hired Joe Kanefield, a former state elections director now in private practice, to make the state's case to reject the petitions to the high court.
The measure seeks to ask voters to approve a state law to make permanent a one-cent surcharge in the state's 5.6 percent sales tax. A temporary levy approved in 2010 self-destructs this coming May.
Backers have laid out in detail where the proceeds should go, with most earmarked for K-12 education and other funds set aside for everything from road construction to health care for children.
State law requires organizers to prefile a copy of the initiative with Bennett's office before gathering signatures.
A paper copy contained a different distribution formula for about $350 million of the proceeds; an electronic version filed on disk had the formula identical to the one attached to the petitions and circulated.
Bennett said the discrepancy between the paper version and what was shown to voters invalidates the entire petition drive. Oberbillig disagreed, saying Bennett should have allowed organizers to correct the error when it was discovered.
But Bennett said it's not that simple. And he said the statute does not recognize electronic copies.
As proof, he pointed to a section of the law which says that the application for an initiative, along with a copy of the text, must be filed "on a form to be provided by the secretary of state.” That form, said Bennett, is the paper one.
Pedersen, whose group has hired former Supreme Court Justice Stanley Feldman, said Bennett is wrong.
Even if the statute does require a paper copy -- a point she is not conceding -- there is no such mandate in the Arizona Constitution.
downtownresident posted at 8:56 pm on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
Ken,
Is your birth certificate on file anywhere?
I'd like to see it.
Leon Ceniceros posted at 10:07 pm on Mon, Jul 23, 2012.
If a plantiff or a defendent feels that a judicial error has been made, they have the right here in America to..................APPEAL.
SORRY, LIBERALS.....OBAMA HASN'T TRASHED ALL OF THE CONSTITUTION AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS........YET.
GO GET UM......SEC. OF STATE, KEN BENNETT.....SIC THE LAW ON THEM.
one of the last posted at 4:28 am on Tue, Jul 24, 2012.
How much is this costing the AZ tax payers for Bennett to go through all this to prevent the people of AZ from voting on what we want.
Sorry Leon its not Obama trashing anything
This is not the Bill of Rights.
This is not the Constitution
This is a T-party follower following the orders of the REd Mountain T-party and Russel Pearce to try to block AZ voters.
mesateacher posted at 6:40 am on Tue, Jul 24, 2012.
Sorry, folks. Bennett is right, like it or not. As Americans, we must defend the rule of law. The rules are the rules. And the petitioners messed up -- maybe not intentionally, but they still got it wrong. The rule of law is a fundamental principle of our democracy, and to allow judges to make corrections like this is just wrong. Too bad the Justice Dept, Obama and his henchmen don't get it: the law matters. If you don't like it, change it, but do it legally.
Homer-B posted at 11:35 am on Tue, Jul 24, 2012.
All he is doing is furthering his own personal agenda so that he can run for Governor when that crazy whack-job we have now is finally through with her term. Pandering to the right for political gain...What a shock! Hey, maybe he'll win this & when he's Governor, he can join all of the rest of the idiots and gut education even more. How can anyone be against spending money on education? And don't start with the whole "Schools waste money, etc" nonsense, 'cause that's a cop-out!
downtownresident posted at 9:26 pm on Tue, Jul 24, 2012.
Panderers have no shame. Think about the contributions this will bring in when he runs for gov.