Nevada
Citizens in Charge Foundation and Citizens in Charge want to set the record straight with regards to our February 2011 Lilburne Award Winners: Tracy and Linda Strickland.
It seems there was some confusion on the part of one Boulder City resident about the nature of the award and how and why we give it. You can view his blog post here.
Today, Citizens in Charge Foundation president Paul Jacob sent the following letter to the author of the blog post:
Mr. Stubbs,
The Nevada Senate passed a resolution Thursday rejecting an initiative petition to create a taxing district for a sports arena on the Las Vegas Strip, sending the measure to the 2012 ballot. Senate Concurrent Resolution 4 was approved on a voice vote and now goes to the Assembly, though with the Senate’s action, the vote there is moot.
Liberal activists and labor leaders have spent the early days of the legislative session warning lawmakers they would pursue a ballot initiative to raise taxes if the Legislature fails to act on its own. But conservative activists aren’t standing idly by in the face of those threats. “We can’t let Danny Thompson have the ballet to himself,” Republican operative Robert Uithoven said of the Nevada AFL-CIO boss who has talked about using a ballot initiative for an end run around the Legislature. Conservatives are looking to revive the measure that would require a two-thirds vote of the people to pass any initiative petition to raise taxes. Uithoven helped organize a similar effort in 2008.
Boulder City, Nevada officials seem to think repeatedly suing their own citizens is a good idea. In his weekly Townhall column on Sunday, Paul Jacob discusses the situation:
Public officials cannot simply throw dissenters into a gulag and govern by decree. But the city governors in Boulder City, Nevada, have found the next best thing.
Sue the people.
Regularly and repeatedly.
As a method of effectuating an oligarchy, what could be more American?
Boulder City’s lawsuit against five citizens who circulated a petition for a ballot question for November’s election will move forward after District Court Judge Jerome Tao ruled Thursday the defendants weren’t immune from the city’s litigation. The city sued the petitioners Nov. 24 to challenge the legality of the ordinance, which requires the city to receive approval from voters before going into debt $1 million or more. It passed with 58 percent of the vote on Nov. 2.
The Boulder City Council this week approved four ballot questions for the next municipal election and rejected three others in a meeting that sparked heated debate over how ballot initiatives are handled. A question to revise the city’s charter to reduce the minimum residency requirement for candidates running for City Council passed unanimously. The requirement would be reduced from two years, set when the charter was established in 1960, to 30 days, the minimum required by state law.
The Nevada Supreme Court Thursday ruled the battle over the so-called Personhood Initiative was moot at this point and dismissed the appeal. The Personhood Nevada ballot advocacy group headed by Richard Ziser of Las Vegas wanted to put an initiative on the 2010 ballot, which would declare even the most immature human embryos as having all the rights of a person. Opponents said it was simply a backdoor attempt to shut down a woman’s right to choose.
A proposal to build an arena on the Las Vegas Strip might be headed for the 2011 Nevada Legislature, but first it will face a legal challenge. The secretary of state’s office says it has verified more than enough voter signatures to move the initiative petition along. Matt Griffin, deputy secretary of state in charge of elections, said Monday that 157,778 signatures were certified as registered voters on the petition. It needed 97,002.
A federal appeals court has ruled that Nevada’s requirements for ballot initiatives are constitutional and do not limit free speech. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a Las Vegas federal court judge’s ruling in a lawsuit by backers of a proposed initiative on the 2008 statewide ballot.
Backers of a proposed sports arena on the Las Vegas Strip said Monday they have enough signatures to take the matter to the 2011 Legislature - or put it to voters the following year. Former Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said organizers collected more than 200,000 signatures statewide from voters in each of Nevada’s three congressional districts - more than twice the number needed.
The man whose family fought the city of Las Vegas over its move to take their Fremont Street property cannot understand why the Legislature wants voters to “water down” a constitutional amendment that protects people like him. Harry Pappas said he is shocked by Question 4, the proposal put on the Nov. 2 ballot by state lawmakers. If voters approve the question, then they revise the Peoples’ Initiative to Stop Taking Our Land (PISTOL) constitutional amendment that 60 percent of them approved in 2008.
Boulder City officials have filed a complaint in Clark County District Court alleging that three ballot initiatives violate state and local laws. The complaint, filed July 23 against eight defendants it says circulated petitions, seeks an injunction to prevent the initiatives from being placed on the November ballot because they involve administrative acts delegated to the city.
With little discussion, the Fernley City Council voted 4-0-1 to adopt a resolution concerning arguments and rebuttals for and against a ballot question concerning the city’s mandatory trash collection service. Cal Eilrich, councilman, abstained from the vote because he said he served on one of the committees involved in the issue.
In Nevada members of the grassroots group Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) announced that the ballot initiative the group sponsored has hit a financial brick wall. The initiative backed by PLAN has failed to reach the 2010 ballot after securing only 66,000 of the 97,002 signatures they needed.
Nevada will not pass an immigration law similar to the one taking effect this month in Arizona, at least not in the immediate future. A move to have the issue placed on the 2012 ballot was pronounced dead Tuesday, according to a spokesman for state Assemblyman Chad Christensen, who championed the initiative.