October 10, 2010|By Larry Carson, The Baltimore Sun
A ruling by the state's highest court that a Montgomery County referendum should be on next month's ballot despite questions over disqualified petition signatures is giving new hope to the leaders of two failed petition drives in Howard County — one challenging new zoning for downtown Columbia and another fighting an expanded grocery store at Turf Valley.
The court ruled Sept. 29 that a challenge to Montgomery County fees for emergency ambulance service should appear on the ballot in November. A petition drive for that ballot issue collected more than 52,000 signatures, but the county Board of Elections threw out thousands of signatures because they allegedly did not follow Maryland law laid out in a December 2008 decision by the very same Court of Appeals. Since the court did not issue a written explanation for its decision to overrule the elections board this year, though, it is unclear how the new decision might affect other petition challenges
The written decision might not come for months, but organizers of the failed Howard drives say it might help them in future elections, though some of the issues of the Montgomery case are different from those faced by the Howard petitioners.
Nonetheless, Marc Norman, who opposed a Howard County Council zoning bill allowing a much larger supermarket at Turf Valley with a referendum petition drive that was ruled invalid, is jubilant. His attempts to get the courts to validate his petition signatures on constitutional grounds have failed so far, but the case remains before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. Two federal lawsuits are also pending.
"It's going to have a massive effect," Norman said. "We know we're going to be on the ballot in 2012."
Russ Swatek, who organized the petition drive on the downtown Columbia zoning, said he's also encouraged, but less certain. "It gives us some hope," he said, though the Montgomery case seemed to hinge more on whether the names were legible than whether the signatures satisfied Maryland's strict standard.
At issue is Maryland's law, which, the high court said nearly two years ago in another Montgomery County case, requires a signature exactly like the one on voter rolls, or a first and last name and middle initial along with a date of birth and home address. Anything else — nicknames, shortened first names, etc. — is invalid. Howard's elections board said Norman's initial batch of signatures was OK but reversed itself in early 2009 when the then-three-month-old high court ruling came to light. Norman believes the majority of appeals judges now feel their comments on requirements for signatures were interpreted too strictly.
Invalid signatures under that strict standard also doomed the later Columbia downtown drive organized by Taxpayers Against Giveaways, but their court case was dismissed in August because the group failed to file a required memorandum, so Swatek's appeal is more limited.
Howard's election officials still have all the petitions in a safe in the board's office, said Deputy Administrator Guy Mickley, but no one knows when the high court will release a detailed written opinion.
Two attorneys representing the county elections board for the two cases don't see a new ruling reviving the two issues. These cases, they said, are based on the law when they were filed, and should not be affected by a new ruling.
"It doesn't change the facts of these cases. I don't see how it could," said Gerald Richman, the lawyer on the Turf Valley case. Mike Molinaro, the board's attorney on the downtown development case, said the pending appeal doesn't involve the validity of the signatures. "I don't see any impact," he said.
Business-friendly?
The small gathering of business people Monday evening at Eggspectation restaurant wasn't a political fundraiser, but it was a campaign event for Jeff Robinson, a Republican running for the House of Delegates in Democratic-dominated District 13.
It was another in a long series of gripe sessions about what some see as Maryland's unfriendly business climate. Robinson hopes to use video from the event on his website to attract votes. The sessions are similar to numerous gatherings sponsored by Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Robinson is one of a slate of three Republicans, including Ed Priola and Loretta Gaffney, trying to unseat Democratic incumbents Frank Turner, Shane Pendergrass and Guy Guzzone.
Their argument is that although the financial debacle that caused the recession resulted from the failures of private businesses, the state's demanding regulations and high taxes are crippling business owners and making recovery harder. Laura Mclnerney, who owns a Geeks on Call technical support franchise, said she's from Florida, where there is a sales tax but no additional state income tax. "Maryland is a great place to work and live," she said, adding, however, that "it's difficult when everything gets more and more expensive."
