Referee Recommends Court Throw Out TABOR Petition

Monday, July 24th 2006, 4:10 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- An Oklahoma Supreme Court referee recommended Monday that justices throw out an initiative petition to curb government growth because it has insufficient valid signatures to send it to the ballot.

The report by Referee Gregory Albert found the petition was 1,341 signatures short after 80,806 signatures were disallowed for various reasons.

He said almost 60,000 signatures should be removed because they were collected by ineligible circulators who resided out of state.

Albert said he found convincing evidence that managers of the petition drive knowingly used professional circulators to collect signatures in violation of state law.

The referee's report now goes to the Supreme Court, which will make the final decision on the validity of the signatures.

The proposed state question would limit the growth of government spending to a combination of the rate of inflation and population growth.