Why Should Your Home Be Governments' Private ATM?by Eric Dondero
It made it! Over 30,000 signatures were handed in. Late yesterday, North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger announced that the necessary number of valid signatures were certified. Originally, 26,500 were needed. With 5 days to go before the deadline, the Attorney General issued a ruling that 1,204 more signatures would need to be gathered. His reasoning: He chose to abide by the total voter registrant numbers for the 2010 census, rather than the previous year.
Petitioners scrambled. But dedicated crews in Jamestown, Bismark and Grand Forks, managed to collect the final 1,204 and a few additional signatures just to be safe.
The initiative will now appear on the Primary Election balloot for June 4, 2012. If passed, North Dakota will no longer have property taxes. The Amendment directs the legislature to fund programs solely through the other 32 sources of revenue available to the State such as the sales tax, fees, and the estimated $2.5 billion surplass from oil production revenues.
The organizing sponsor for the initiative was Empower The Taxpayer, Charlene Nelson out of Casstleton, Chair. State Representative Dan Ruby, a libertarian Republican from Minot, was also a sponsor of the initiative. Other groups involved in co-sponsoring the initiative and gathering signatures included: Williston Tea Party, Valley City Tea Party, Grand Forks Tea Party, and the Libertarian Party of North Dakota.
EmpowertheTaxpayer.com
2 comments:
But will this actually bind the legislature? California courts, for example, have recently taken to ruling that ballot initiatives are ordinary law and thus can be repealed through an ordinary majority vote of the legislature. This has neutered one of the few ways California's electorate has of disciplining their legislature.
Yes.
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