Next Time, Read The Directions

July 14, 2012

The City of Glendale faced two sets of petition gatherers recently, one was a petition for a referendum sponsored by Ken Jones and Joe Cobb. Faithful readers of my brain dumps are already overly familiar with that petiion. There was another, much more well funded, petition circulated to have a sales tax initiative added to the ballot.

Both have been turned in to the Glendale City Clerk now, but only one, the tax initiative has been reviewed completely and rejected by the City Clerk. The formation of the political action committee was invalid according to state law, the petitions were turned in late according to the Arizona State Constitution and the statement of the initiative was inaccurate and misleading according to state law.

Because the group used paid circulators for their petition sheets, the number of signatures turned in was NOT a problem with the initiative, they turned in about 4,100 signatures, about 2,000 more than required by law. Just because Glendale didn’t mention the signatures doesn’t mean they are all valid, if somehow a court forced Glendale to accept the petitions, they would then be able to check 5 percent of them for validity before releasing them to the County for further examination.

Now, the Save Glendale Now political action committee, the circulators of the sales tax initiative petition, have decided to sue the City of Glendale. They claim that Glendale incorrectly rejected their petitions based on “several misinterpretations of the law.” Really? I don’t think so, seems to me that the ONLY one of the reasons that could be open for any interpretation is the second one, so let’s leave that one for last.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Everybody who drops into the City of Glendale clerk’s office and “pulls papers” for a petition is handed a BUNCH of paper. One of those bundles of paper is about 60 pages of, essentially, all the instructions on how petitions should be filed and when they are due. It is all written in English, and was understandable to me. I am no genius, nor am I a lawyer and I read all of the pages fairly quickly. The nature of the document dictates that things such as exact due dates are NOT printed directly within the document, but the answers are readily available using very little effort. I imagine that, should there be a question, there are people available to ask. The Glendale City Clerk, if asked, would probably be able to provide an answer to a question such as when the petition signatures would be due.

Unfortunately, it appears that Rod Williams, who is now the Save Glendale Now chairman, initially pulled the wrong paperwork. He requested and was provided REFERENDUM paperwork (instead of the proper INITITATIVE paperwork) by the City Clerk on May 30, 2012. I know this because I wanted to see if the allegations of Goldwater that paperwork wasn’t available for their clients Mr. Jones and Mr. Cobb to pick up was true. So, within the packages pulled during the period that Goldwater claimed no paperwork was available (actually a little prior to the period) was a referendum package for Mr. Williams. Of course, had Mr. Williams filed the referendum paperwork and then handed in the signatures, it would have been rejected as being incorrect. He should have done his research.

This group of high powered people actually made this same mistake at least twice, maybe even three times! We already know Rod came in May 30 and grabbed the wrong papers. Then, on June 14, Connie Wilhelm (who is now the Save Glendale Now Treasurer) came in to City Hall for papers. We’re not sure why, if somebody noticed that Rod had grabbed the wrong packet for an initiative petition, you’d have to wonder why Connie picked up the same exact packet. The same exact INCORRECT packet.

Somebody finally got it right and they managed to file the necessary things, including their political action committee. Being backed by some large bank accounts, their committee decided to hire a company to circulate their petitions rather than relying on the “volunteer” method like Ken Jones and Joe Cobb did. There are also regulations for paid circulators, including the fact that none may be a felon, for instance, yet… oh well, let’s leave that story for another time.

Political Action Committee Name Shenanigans

One of the reasons that the City of Glendale (CoG) rejected the Save Glendale Now petitions was that, once the committee received their serial number for their initiative petition, they did not change the name of their committee to reflect it. So, the committee should have been something like “Save Glendale Now Political Action Committee to support Initiative I-12-01”. We don’t have the actual paperwork on this, but we have requested it, so if the above name isn’t quite correct please forgive us. CoG in their rejection letter states:

1. The name of the political committee, as reflected in the Statement of Organization and used on the Application for Initiative Petition Serial Number, fails to incorporate the official serial number for the initiative petition as required by ARS Sec. 16-902.01(F).

This particular regulation is designed to keep the citizens of a municipality informed as to who is looking to change what. Since I am involved with the Glendale First! PAC, I have some familiarity with these regulations, although they are slightly different depending on the purpose of the PAC. But, the fact of the matter is that the Glendale First! PAC complies with the regulations, two people without college degrees figured it our fairly quickly without the assistance of the CIty Clerk.

Since Save Glendale Now is suing CoG based on “several misinterpretations of the law”, I can’t imagine that a simple regulation such as the one above could be misinterpreted. I mean, we interpreted it the same way CoG did, does that mean WE also misinterpreted the law? Nah. When Connie Williams said that her group “fully complied” with all constitutional and statutory requirements for putting an initiative on the ballot, was she including the above statutory requirement? If so, perhaps she will be able to demonstrate how they complied to a judge. If not, then we have to conclude that her statement isn’t true. Don’t we?

Maybe she meant they complied with JUST the constitutional requirements, I guess.

Constitutional Law Ignored (where’s Goldwater?)

As the arbiters of all things constitutional in Arizona, such as adherence to vague interpretations of the “gift clause”, we assume Goldwater Institute will be dragging Save Glendale Now into the courthouse once they find a Glendale resident to give them standing in the matter because it’s obvious that they have ignored the Arizona Constitution. Hahahahaha, nah, I’m just kidding, I’m sure they will ignore this breach. Just joking.

Anyway, the Arizona Constitution (click here for Article 4, Section 1, 4) has the rules for both initiative and referendum petitions. The one we’re concerned with is, of course, the initiative:

All petitions submitted under the power of the initiative shall be known as initiative petitions, and shall be filed with the secretary of state not less than four months preceding the date of the election at which the measures so proposed are to be voted upon.

Because, we assume, their PAC didn’t perform their research well enough, they probably assumed that the election they would be concerned with was the November general election. Unfortunately, they are wrong. The date of the election at which their measure would have been voted upon, should their petition have been accepted, is August 28, 2012. I’m sure that, somehow, their attorney will make some sort of argument that the date should be something else, a similar argument we would predict would be made by Mr. Jones and Mr. Cobb for their late submission of their petition.

Is there a wormhole or some other sort of time warping mechanism somewhere in Glendale? What other explanation could there be for such consistent arguments that the City of Glendale can’t reliably offer deadlines for such simple procedures? Do we need to call in Stephen Hawking or can we just admit that the petitioners are, indeed, simply WRONG. The protestations of the committee that CoG should be more forthcoming with help on these sort of things is ludicrous, directions are provided all you have to do is follow them. Trust me, the forms and regulations are significantly simpler than the rules of shuffleboard.

Misleading Description

One of the errors that Ken Jones and Joe Cobb made with their petition for referendum was that they didn’t file their description of their referendum with the city. The purpose of that is to compare the same description printed on the actual pages people would be asked to sign with the filed description to be sure people weren’t misled into signing something. We checked the same thing with this petition, and they DID have their description filed.

The problem with the Save Glendale Now description of their initiative is that is inaccurate and misleading. I imagine that this argument will be the one that gets the most attention by the judge and lawyers, even though it doesn’t seem that there is much room for interpretation other than that it is incorrect. Read the letter from Glendale (click here) and decide for yourself.

It’s Not MY Fault

It’s obvious that Save Glendale Now made a bunch of serious errors in their bid to get an initiative on a ballot. Yet, they don’t seem to want to accept any responsibility for their mistakes.

In the AZCentral.com article (click here to read) I read for some of the information for this post, the quotes from two of the principals in this matter jumped out. The first, from Save Glendale Now Chairman Rod Williams is interesting, saying he is:

“…outraged that two unelected officials, the city clerk and the city attorney,  would attempt to trample on the rights of every Glendale citizen to exercise his  or her initiative rights as enshrined in the Arizona Constitution.”  

I understand hyperbole, but really, Rod “outraged”? That’s a pretty strong word. The facts of the matter is that your group, unelected, is attempting to “trample” on a tax passed by duly voted in city officials. Sure, you have the right to do so, that’s why we enjoy living in this country so much. But to use words such as you did, including “enshrined” to describe the Arizona Constitution which, while you won’t admit it, your group has decided to ignore (Article 4, Part 1, section 1(4)) and now are so “outraged” that you are suing the City of Glendale for actually FOLLOWING THE CONSTITUTION. Are there any other articles, parts or sections you feel entitled to ignore, Mr. Williams?

Dave Kimmerle, who is president of Sanderson Ford (a great Coyotes sponsor, by the way), said he thought Mr. Tindall’s (the CoG attorney) allegation that voters were misled is “amusing”. We all know “amusing” is a denigrating word, usually used to dismiss something as unimportant or beneath one’s attention. Even though the summary description DOES NOT describe the initiative by its language and under existing Arizona LAW, Mr. Kimmerle is amused that the potential for a signer of his petition might be misled by that description or by a combination of the incorrect description and unregulated words uttered by paid petition circulators. I disagree, but wouldn’t go so far as saying I was “outraged”. Peeved, perhaps.

Mr. Kimmerle goes on to say, in defense of the incorrect initiative description:

“Every petition circulated contained the full text of the initiative for every voter to read. It doesn’t take a law degree to read the initiative and understand what it does.” 

The mechanics of petition circulating is simple, yet so easy to mess with. Each petition sheet has 15 “slots” for people to sign. In this case, the incorrect initiative description is printed on the FRONT of every sheet for people to read before signing. The “contained the full text of the initiative” that Mr. Kimmerle refers to is a copy of the text of the intitiative attached to the BACK of the sheet, which may or may not be held on a clipboard. So, let’s be real here, do you think somebody who wanted to mislead people being asked to sign a petition would feel fairly comfortable that VERY few of them would go to the trouble of reading the paper attached to the BACK of the sheet? I think that’s a pretty low risk.

Do you think that Mr. Kimmerle, presented with a 2012 Raptor with a blown engine (because the oil was never changed) would accept such an excuse from a customer claiming that their neglected maintenance was close enough to the real maintenance schedule and the engine should be replaced? Or, would Mr. Kimmerle rightly reject the engine replacement because the owner simply didn’t follow the instructions?

Then, why would the short description of the intitiative that people are more likely to read be different? Did they simply make yet one more mistake following the rules? Or, was it deliberate? It’s hard to nail down motives, but Mr. Kimmerle’s statement implying that every person signing their petition really had the actual text of the initiative conveniently available to them is “amusing”.

Keep the faith, my Coyotes brothers and sisters, the smart people aren’t as smart as they imagine.

Please refer to the following AZ Central article for more:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/07/13/20120713glendale-business-group-files-lawsuit-vs-sales-tax-hike.html