Angle resumes drive for tax-increase limits

CARSON CITY -- Former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle will file with the secretary of state today a new version of her Proposition 13-style petition that would allow voters to limit property tax increases to 2 percent a year.

Angle, R-Reno, said the petition has the same tax limit requirements of the petition she withdrew in October, but it has been rewritten so it can better withstand an expected challenge from the AFL-CIO.

She failed in 2004 and 2006 to collect enough signatures to put the tax limitation petition before voters.

To qualify the petition for a spot on the election ballot, her organization needs to collect 58,836 signatures by next May 20. Then voters must approve it as a ballot question during general elections in 2008 and 2010.

If they do, the constitution would be amended and the 2 percent limit on property taxes would be implemented in 2011.

But Angle acknowledged that she lacks financial resources to hire paid circulators to collect signatures for the latest petition drive.

Initially petitions will be circulated by volunteers. If her We the People Nevada donation efforts are successful, then paid circulators will be hired. Angle said she expects to have to pay $2 for each signature.

When she first filed the petition in September, Angle spoke optimistically of her chances for success because she had secured a $200,000 contribution from an anonymous donor.

She said Monday that the donor backed out on the contribution after the AFL-CIO challenged the constitutionality of the petition in district court in Carson City. Angle pulled the petition six days before a scheduled court hearing.

"The donation went away with the lawsuit," she said. "Everything changes when you get lawyers involved."

Consequently her organization has been mailing letters asking people to donate to the petition drive. In letters, the organization says it needs $50,000 to fight a lawsuit and $350,000 to collect petitions.

The Legislature in 2005 passed a law that limits property tax increases to 3 percent a year on owner-occupied residential property and 8 percent on commercial and other property. Angle was the only legislator to vote against that legislation.

In their letters to prospective donors, We the People Nevada calls the current tax limitations "temporary" because they could be changed at any time by legislators.

Her tax limitation proposal, patterned after the Proposition 13 law approved in California in 1978, would amend the state constitution. Once amended, the 2 percent annual increase limitation could not be changed without a vote of the people. It also would apply to all types of property, not just residences.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Danny Thompson had filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Angle's petition on the grounds that it violated the "uniform and equal" tax provision in the state constitution.