Attorney may be right about the bath water

Kermitt Waters is an eminent domain attorney, having represented “the little guy” in numerous cases where the government had seized his clients’ private property, offering only dimes on the dollar.

Mr. Waters won a number of sizable awards for those clients. But again and again he saw those awards reduced or tossed out by judges who he came to view as part of the state’s corrupt political establishment. Kermit Waters became a man with a mission.

First, in 2006, he won preliminary voter approval of the eminent domain reform proposal known as the “People’s Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Lands” — though only after his old friends the judges trimmed out the parts found most objectionable by the local political class.

Next, Mr. Waters came forward with a proposal to boost Nevada’s casino gaming tax from the present 6.75 percent to the average of the rates charged in other states — something on the order of 21 percent.

For the record, that’s a bad idea.

Not even waiting for the voters to have their say, however, Nevada’s judges threw that petition out entirely — along with a more modest gaming tax rate hike proposed by the teachers union to increase school funding — on the grounds it would allow other states’ legislatures to indirectly determine Nevada’s tax rates, and (more peculiarly) on the grounds that itemizing both the tax hike and how the money would be spent violates a state law prohibiting ballot questions dealing with more than one subject.

Now, Mr. Waters vows to collect 58,800 valid petition signatures by May 20 to place on the ballot a repeal of that 2005 “single-subject” law.

“The single-subject rule is being used by activist judges to block all these initiatives,” Mr. Waters argues. “The legislature (passed the law) to keep people from doing initiatives.”

In fact, the Legislature enacted that 2005 law to remedy a very real problem. The 2004 ballot had challenged Nevada’s voters with a gantlet of deceptive ballot questions. Question 4 on that ballot, for instance — the “Insurance Rate Reform and Reduction Act” — presented itself as a rollback of auto insurance rates. But the attorney who sponsored Question 4 surely knew that section would be thrown out as unconstitutional.

Further down in the text, they included language which would have wiped out medical liability reform, with a clause that the later section would remain valid even after their auto insurance “teaser” was (inevitably) tossed by the courts.

Question 5 was just as misleading. Dubbed the “Stop Frivolous Lawsuits and Protect Our Legal Rights Act,” it would instead have protected attorneys’ ability to collect sky-high fees.

Voters in their wisdom rejected both measures, but the Legislature was right to take steps to block purposefully confusing “Trojan Horse” initiatives.

What about attorney Waters’ second charge — are “activist judges” using the single-subject rule “to block all these initiatives”?

It starts to look that way. A final ruling on a revised teachers union proposal to bump the gaming tax rate to 9.75 percent is still awaited. But to say an initiative violates the “single subject” rule if it a) proposes to raise taxes and then b) specifies where the revenues would be used, is patently absurd.

Under this interpretation, voters could not be asked to approve a routine school bond — they’d have to be asked to approve government borrowing at interest, “but we can’t tell you where the money goes,” then later asked to approve a second measure allocating more money for the schools, “but we can’t tell you where the money’s coming from.” Ridiculous.

And such suspicions are only amplified when the teachers union petition is thrown out by “Senior Supreme Court Justice” Miriam Shearing, who is not even an elected judge, having refused to face the voters again after the court’s odious and despicable violation of the state constitution in Guinn v. Legislature.

Mr. Waters is right to be suspicious. But the solution is not to throw out the wise “single subject” reform, entirely. Instead, the Legislature must promptly clarify the limited intent of the statute, making it clear the judges — whether through stupidity or in service to ulterior motives — have gotten it wrong.