Local News in Brief : Petition Ruled Invalid

For the second time, Carson City Clerk Helen Kawagoe has ruled that a petition that seeks to eliminate much of Carson’s mobile home rent control ordinance has failed to get enough valid signatures to get on the ballot.

Kawagoe’s announcement is likely to precipitate a court battle, according to Ann Stewart Brown, the Sacramento-based political consultant who represents mobile home park owners backing the measure.

Kawagoe’s second rejection of the ballot measure came Friday after she rechecked petitions that were submitted July 6. The review of the count was done at the insistence of the mobile home park owners group.

The results of the first tally were announced July 27, when the clerk’s office said the petition had failed by 60 signatures to attain the 10% of registered voters, 3,892, required to put the measure on the ballot.

At the council meeting last Tuesday, Kawagoe announced that a number of additional signatures had been validated and that the group needed only seven more to qualify.

In her written announcement Friday, Kawagoe, who was not available for comment, said the petition had failed by 39 signatures. Wanda Higaki, chief deputy clerk, said she was unable to answer questions about the difference between last Tuesday’s and Friday’s tallies.

Brown said earlier in the week that sufficient signatures had been found during the recount to qualify the measure, but Kawagoe had begun raising new objections to previously approved signatures.

Brown said petition backers would sue if Kawagoe did not qualify it for the ballot.

The council will meet Tuesday to consider the matter.

According to the initiative, people qualifying for federal poverty guidelines would remain under rent control. For a 4-person family, the limit on annual income would be $19,150; for an individual, it would be $13,400. Rents for those not meeting these guidelines would be decontrolled two years after the measure takes effect. During the first two years, annual increases would be limited to 9%.

Under Carson’s current rent control ordinance, rent increases are pegged to increases in the expenses of operating a park and to any capital improvements.