Hearing begins on TABOR challenge

Thursday, June 15th 2006, 3:44 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ An attorney told an Oklahoma Supreme Court referee on Thursday that he will present evidence to nullify more than 120,000 signatures on an initiative petition seeking to limit state government spending.

Among other things, Kent Meyers argued that at least 50,000 signatures should be thrown out because those signing the petitions were not registered to vote in Oklahoma.

Meyers said thousands of signatures should be declared invalid on other grounds, including that many were gathered by ``professional'' out-of-state circulators and were improperly notarized.

The so-called taxpayer-bill-of-rights initiative petition, commonly referred to as TABOR, would restrict government spending to a combination of inflation and population growth.

In his opening arguments, Meyers referred to e-mails from petition officials about bringing in paid circulators from Missouri and other states.

He said petition sponsors knew many of the signatures were invalid, ``but they presented them anyway'' to the Oklahoma secretary of state.

Meyers said one petition official sent an e-mail late in the 90-day petition drive saying they needed to hire ``62 professionals'' to meet their signature goal.

He said Rick Carpenter sent an e-mail saying ``we don't want to interfere'' with questionable tactics of petition circulators.

Carpenter headed Oklahomans for Action, the group formed to work on the petition drive, which was largely funded by out-of-state groups who advocate limited government.

Kieran D. Maye Jr., representing Carpenter, told Supreme Court Referee Greg Albert that the challengers would fall far short of knocking out enough signatures to keep the issue off the ballot.

The signatures counted by the Secretary of State's Office were about 80,000 more than required to send the petition to a statewide vote.

Maye urged Albert to follow the guidelines of the Supreme Court in allowing the cockfighting petition to go to a vote a few years ago. For instance, he said the court held that ``intent'' is a key factor in determining residency of petition circulators.

He said he will show that some of the circulators had moved to Oklahoma and were still living in the state.

A group that reads like a ``who's who'' of business in Oklahoma filed the lawsuit against the TABOR petition, challenging both the sufficiency of the signatures and the legality of petition.

Among other things, the group argues Initiative Petition 379 ``deceptively and misleadingly contains multiple subjects in violation'' of the Oklahoma Constitution, while violating the U.S. Constitution by denying due process and illegally impairing contracts.

More than two dozen protestants were listed in the lawsuit, including George B. Kaiser, president and CEO of the Kaiser-Francis Oil Co.; Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Corp., J. Larry Nichols, CEO of Devon Energy, and Luke R. Corbett, CEO of Kerr-McGee Corp.

Others included John Brock, chairman of Brighton Energy; Clifford Hudson, CEO of Sonic Corp.; Joseph L. Parker, chairman of the board of Anchor Stone Co.; V. Burns Hargis, vice president of the Bank of Oklahoma; Kirk Humphreys, Oklahoma City businessman and former mayor; H.E. Rainbolt, banker; Stuart Price, oilman; Clayton Bennett, businessman, and others.