Vol. 4, No. 24
.jpg)
October 15, 2007
Nevada's Online State News Journal
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| . | |||||||
 |
Find Out
More About Our Wonderful State. |
COPYWRITING
|
|
Angle's Tax Revolt
Comes To Abrupt End
Threatened Court Action
Halts Petition Drive
The latest attempt by former state assemblywoman Sharron Angle to change Nevada's tax law has failed following threats by a union official to challenge the initiative petition in court. Angle said following her disclosure to not offer the petition for signatures, that she is not done attempting to create a California Style Prop 13 in the Silver State. She called the court challenge by AFL-CIO official Tommy Thompson another in a long line of nitpicking.
The petition, or one of its variants has been brought before the public several times in the last few years but was never on the ballot through either a lack of signatures or failed court tests. Angle said she would have needed to gather slightly more than 58,000 signatures by May 20, 2008 to qualify for next November's ballot.
Arguments against the tax proposal include unfair taxation in that identical properties could be taxed at different rates depending on sale of the property. Angle said she may have the petition rewritten to exclude any of the little nitpicking procedural questions Thompson and his group has. Angle's group is called We the People Nevada.
In Nevada, the Secretary of State is the official elections officer and Deputy Secretary of State for Elections, Matt Griffin said the petition as delivered had many mistakes including typos that would be a precursor to court action. The petition also did not have a disclaimer that indicates passage would constitute a constitutional amendment. Thompson said his group would challenge any future petitions presented by Angle and her organization.
Angle has been raising money for several months looking forward to paying people to gather signatures, and now says the court proceedings are designed to empty her vault. The legislative session of 2005 produced a tax bill that caps property tax in most cases at three percent for private property and eight percent for commercial property. Under Angle's proposed tax law, when a property is sold it is reassessed at full cash value and taxed accordingly. Under existing law, that does not happen.
According to many, Angle's law would create unfair taxation for some. Identical properties would be taxed differently Thompson said when one of the two properties was sold. Thompson believes the new owner could pay several times what the other property owner would be paying. In the 2005 legislation, Angle was in the Assembly representing a district in Washoe County and was the only legislator to vote against the property tax revision and law.
In the Angle initiative, property tax would be capped at two percent, but when property changed hands it would be reassessed and taxed at full cash value. The petition failed in 2004 and 2006. Angle said her initiative has already had a court test because the provisions in her law are identical to California's Proposition 13, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992. California's law was passed in the late 1970s.
•••