Tax and Spending Control question off ballot

The Tax and Spending Control initiative has been pulled off the November ballot.

In a 30-page opinion issued Friday afternoon, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that TASC's supporters clearly violated the state constitution and statutes by circulating a different version of the proposed amendment than they filed with the Secretary of State.

They ruled the mandatory requirements of the Nevada Constitution must be strictly adhered to in deciding whether an initiative can be put on the ballot and that the TASC committee failed to do so.

The proposed amendment sought to limit future growth in government spending to no more than population plus inflation each biennium.

The opinion rejected TASC author Sen. Bob Beers' claim the difference between the versions was an insignificant "typographical error." The justices cited analyses by governmental finance experts and the Legislative Counsel Bureau's fiscal division which estimate the difference between the two versions would amount to as much as $1.6 billion in the first budget cycle alone.

They wrote that the circulated version of TASC would allow a 21 percent increase in state spending in the 2009-11 budget cycle - a larger increase than the state's historic 19.3 percent annual spending growth rate. And they said that error would be compounded every future budget cycle.

As a result, the court wrote, "the circulated petition, as drafted, would have no effect on the very problem that it claimed that it would remedy, i.e., government overspending."

That, the court said, is "more than a mere typographical error; it is misleading."

"The resultant effect of the error is that the initiative's stated purpose of cutting government spending would be defeated in favor of the circulated petition's language, which enables government spending to grow above and beyond its historical rates," the opinion states.

"It's a political decision," said Beers, who recently lost the Republican nomination for governor.

"There's plenty of judicial precedent here within the state to forgive minor technical errors that have very little impact on the measure's content," Beers, R-Las Vegas, added.

Beers said he plans to continue his efforts to curb government growth. He blames public employee unions for the steady increase in government spending.

The court's decision "is likely to widen the gulf between those who work for the government and those who don't," Beers said. "Our out-of-control government unions are going to eat our people alive if we don't do something about it."

TASC lawyer Joel Hansen had argued the court should recognize the proponents were in "substantial compliance" with the constitutional requirements. The high court said that isn't good enough, that mandatory requirements in Nevada's Constitution deserve "strict compliance" and that the differences between the filed and circulated versions of the petition are significant.

The court wrote that, without requiring the filed version of a petition to match the version circulated, there would be no way for potential signers or opponents to know exactly what the effect of an amendment would be until after the signatures were turned in.

They also rejected Hansen's argument the mandates put an unreasonable burden on petition circulators saying it's not unreasonable to require they file and circulate the same petition. The court said there is no excuse for not meeting that requirement.

The opponents, primarily public employee unions, also argued TASC violated the requirement that initiative petitions deal with only one subject. But the high court ruled since the petition is invalid because it violates a constitutional mandate, they don't need to rule on that argument.

Bob Adney, the TASC committee's executive director, said the court "silenced the will of the people" because of what he called a clerical error.

He said 83,184 valid signatures were needed to get on the ballot and TASC collected nearly double that total - 156,254. He blamed "big government unions" for the defeat.

TASC was opposed by Nevadans for Nevada, a union-led coalition, and the court's ruling was praised by Danny Thompson, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO Nevada.

"I think it was the right ruling for the right reason," Thompson said. "It didn't comply with the single-subject law and there were two different versions - and not just a comma out of place. There were substantive differences."

The spending limit plan was modeled on Colorado's Taxpayers Bill of Rights. It proposed to amend the Nevada state constitution to limit local and state government spending increases by using a formula based on the rate of inflation.

Nevada isn't the only place where advocates of smaller government have sought to pass measures capping state spending.

The Michigan elections board on Friday voted against putting a measure on the November ballot that would limit state government spending, agreeing that backers did not collect enough valid signatures.

That followed a recent decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court to throw out a proposed petition to reduce growth in government spending because it lacked enough valid signatures. Oregon and Montana have similar fall ballot measures.

• Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750. The Associated Press contributed to this story.