Ambulance Fee Repeal Now On Ballot
Sep 30, 2010 10:39 - 1 Comment
In a swift ruling, the Maryland Court of Appeals has ordered that the ballot initiative asking whether or not to repeal the Montgomery County ambulance fee be placed on the November ballot.
From Rockville Central editor Cindy Cotte Griffith’s piece on this subject:
On Thursday August 19, 2010, the Montgomery County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association submitted the final group of signatures on petitions to place the law authorizing an ambulance transport fee on the ballot in November. On their website they report over 52,000 voters in Montgomery County who signed the petitions against the fee. They believe the number of signatures gathered for these petitions was the largest number ever recorded for a ballot referendum in Montgomery County and likely the State of Maryland.
However, in a case last June, Jane Doe v. Montgomery County Board of Elections, the Maryland Court of Appeals decided that the state law requires a voter to sign his or her name on petitions exactly as it appears on the statewide voter registration lists. So, if you have a middle initial on your voter registration or a hyphenated name, etc., you must sign petitions the same way. Apparently, many signatures were rejected under these more stringent requirements.
The Court of Appeals in this instance appears to have been very skeptical of the Board of Elections’ reasoning in rejecting the signatures. According to the Washington Post, “‘No physician would ever be able to get his or her name on the petition,’ quipped Court of Appeals Judge Joseph F. Murphy Jr.”
More from the Post:
In the culmination of an extraordinarily swift challenge that made it from Rockville through the high court in Annapolis in just a month - not the years it can sometimes take to fight government overreach - Maryland’s highest court ruled in favor of the petition signers. In a 5 to 2 decision, with an opinion to come later, the majority ordered the lower court to have the referendum placed on the ballot in November.
“It’s a crucial victory for democracy and common sense,” said Montgomery County Council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville), who was irked after some of the signatures he gathered were among the thousands elections officials threw out.
Let the voters decide.