Filed February 1 into the 56th Judicial Circuit by Trigg County Board of Education Attorney Jack Lackey Jr., a 12-page complaint against a petition drawn by the “Trigg County Citizens Right to Vote on Tax Increases” brings a new cloud on a nickel tax levy for real and personal property.
In the complaint, titled “Trigg County Board of Education v. Carmen Finley, Trigg County Clerk,” a host of allegations and concerns are made in and around the petition — which had a 96% confirmed accuracy, but other perceived legal issues.
Most importantly, it claims that the protesting affidavit “failed to comply with KRS 132.017” behind a myriad of reasons:
— That the affidavit be ensured by its five-person committee, to be sworn under oath they will be responsible for circulating and filing the petition in proper form. Neither allegedly occurred, thus ruling the document null and void.
— Only one signature from the five-person committee was notarized, and that was for Chairperson Lisa Champion.
— At the bottom of each page of the petition, a signature line for a committee member is available. And of those 170-plus pages of signatures, 66 of them are signed not by a committee member, but by someone else overseeing its operation. On all but one of those 66 pages, Champion’s signature was added to go along with the non-member signature.
— That even if a judge ruled the affidavit itself had merit, its contents were statutorily and matter-of-law deficient. It failed to protest the tax levy, instead simply stating those signing were either “for” or “against” a tax levy. At best, this language is deficient as it does not protest…at worst, the language was a clever, but deceptive, effort to “persuade or cajole” those persons who are neutral or in favor of the tax to sign “a seemingly benign document.”
— Citing “City of Taylorsville vs. Spencer County Fiscal Court, 2012,” Lackey said the petition calling for a nickel tax vote “must have been worded, so that those signing it were not misled as to the circumstances, nature, or consequences of what they were signing.”
— The language of petition was also materially misleading: claiming the district would be imposing an increase from 52.8 cents per $100 of assessed value on property, up to 58.9 cents per $100. In actuality, and so passed in open regular meetings of the Trigg School Board, the proposed levy would leap from 54.9 cents to 58.9 cents. It means a tax increase of 7.285% instead of the petition’s claim of 11.553%. Lackey said at best, this “false exaggeration” of the percentage increase was included as a material mistake, and at worst was used to “deliberately mislead.”
Multiple times throughout the filing, Lackey noted Finley and her office “should have rejected the petition as deficient, and that [Finley] erred and abused her discretion in finding the petition sufficient.”
Lackey further asserts in Section VI, Article 40 of the filing that the “arbitrary and capricious conduct of the County Clerk has caused significant injury to the TCBE, and entitles the TCBE to a declaration that the petition…was wrongfully determined sufficient, and to strike the petition from any future election.”
A date in court is currently undetermined at this time.
