Road tax may not make the ballot

  PHOENIX - Backers of a proposal to hike state sales taxes for transit projects did not submit enough valid signatures to get the plan on the ballot, Secretary of State Jan Brewer said Monday.

  Brewer said petitions with about 260,000 names were submitted. She said just 138,451 of those were determined to be valid after all the petitions were screened and a random check of the veracity of signature performed.

  Backers need 153,365 necessary to put any proposal to change state law before voters in November.

  Brewer said the 42 percent error rate found by county recorders - names and addresses on petitions that did not match voter rolls - was "the largest overall invalid rate that we've seen in Arizona."

  She said much of that - and high error rates in some other ballot measures this year - may be due to the widespread use of circulators in initiative campaigns who are paid based on the number of signatures they get.

  "That often leads to fraud, it often leads to additional errors," she said.

  A lawsuit already is in the works to convince a judge to declare there are sufficient legally acceptable signatures to ask voters to hike state sales taxes from the current 5.6 cents on every dollar spent to 6.6 cents.

  Attorney Charles Blanchard said he believes Brewer's office improperly rejected some petitions. He also contends Maricopa County, where most of names were rejected, failed to count the signatures of some people who have moved but were still registered to vote at another address.

  But Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne said she has done no such thing.

  Proposition 203 is designed to raise $42.6 billion during the next 30 years. More than half is earmarked for freeways and other state highways that will be identified as priorities, with cities, counties and tribes dividing up another $8.5 billion in revenues to spend on their own priorities.

  There also is some cash for bikeways, scenic roads and protecting neighborhoods. And it has more than $7.6 billion for mass transit, with the lion's share of that designated for proposed intercity passenger rail service from Tucson to Phoenix and possibly beyond.

  Because of a quirk in state law, Blanchard doesn't need to convince a judge there are 153,365 valid names on the petitions: If he can show the figure, based on that random sample, would reach 95 percent of that, the measure would be placed before voters because there is not sufficient time for each county to check each and every one of the signatures submitted.

  That gap - the number Blanchard needs to convince a judge are valid - is 7,668 signatures.

  That legal challenge has the backing of Gov. Janet Napolitano, an outspoken supporter of the plan. Gubernatorial press aide Jeanine L'Ecuyer cited that 260,000 signatures submitted.

  "The will of the people is pretty clear," she said. "They want it on the ballot."

  One bit of irony is that Tom Ziemba, the consultant hired by initiative backers, refused to accept petitions with 18,231 names collected independently by the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona.

  The home builders had cut a deal with the governor to recraft the initiative to remove a provision to impose fees on new homes.

  That left just the sales tax hike.

 In exchange, the organization agreed to provide $100,000 to help put the measure on the ballot. Connie Wilhelm, the group's executive director, instead paid circulators of her own choosing. She submitted those petitions, along with a check for $27,129, to the consulting firm running the campaign.

  Ziemba refused to accept the signatures, saying he had his own plan. He insisted Monday rejecting Wilhelm's petitions was not a mistake.

  But Roc Arnett, president of the East Valley Partnership and one of the organizers of the road tax proposal, isn't so sure. "In hindsight, maybe they should have" accepted them, he said.

  Backers of the road tax plan have so far raised close $1 million, primarily from contracting companies that could get a share of the projects, with much of that going to hire paid circulators.

  There has been no organized opposition to this point, though a number of incumbent legislators and challengers have said they will not vote for the measure if it makes the ballot.