A Maryland Court of Appeals decision that petition signatures don't have to be legible to be valid is giving new hope to critics of development in downtown Columbia and Turf Valley, but Howard board of elections officials say the new wrinkle likely won't change anything.
The court ruling Tuesday could make it easier to force a referendum for voters on contested zoning decisions, and Turf Valley critic Marc Norman is hoping it may also help revive his failed 2009 petition drive.
Howard election board's acting administrator, Guy Mickley, said he doesn't think the new ruling will affect Howard cases, because the decision is not retroactive and legibility was not an issue in the vast majority of signature disqualifications. "Upwards of 75 percent were disqualified because they didn't have a middle initial," he said, which made it impossibleto match names on voter registration roles as required in Maryland law.
But Norman hopes the decision will perhaps persuade courts now considering petition case appeals to force a new look at the long lists of disqualified names, and perhaps aid efforts to get his issue before voters in November 2012.
"That sounds good to us," Norman said about the new court decision. "I'm glad to see the Court of Appeals has decided to stand up for the constitutional rights of voters."
Gerald M. Richman, who represents the board in the Turf Valley case, said old cases should not be affected. "That's history. Once it's done, it's done," he said, though he added that it's impossible to predict what a court might decide. "I don't see how they can go back. The time for the process has expired."
The high court's decision came in a Montgomery County referendum petition case over county-imposed emergency ambulance fees, which volunteer firefighters wanted to give voters a chance to defeat on last year's ballot. Out of 33,740 signatures submitted, only 13,021 were deemed valid by election officials, but the court ordered the issue onto the ballot anyway and voters defeated the fees.
Tuesday's decision explained that ruling by saying that a signature does not have to be legible if there's enough other information provided by the signer to determine that he or she is a legitimate voter.
In Howard, court appeals are pending in both the Columbia and Turf Valley petition cases, though this week's 5-2 high court decision did not say it is retroactive. The first batch of Columbia petitions submitted in April 2010 were found to have 2,139 valid signatures, although 2,501 were required. A total of 3,491 names were submitted.
As the arguments over election laws drag on, actual construction is moving closer for the Howard projects. New buildings should be rising by year's end at the Turf Valley Town Center, and construction could begin on Columbia's first project by some time next year.
The 30-year plan for central Columbia is based on zoning the County Council approved Feb.1, 2010, and calls for up to 5,500 new apartments and roughly six million square feet of offices, stores, hotels and cultural amenities intended to transform the area into an urban-style downtown.
Kevin M. Joyce, an Annapolis lawyer arguing the Columbia case who represents Russell Swatek and a group called Taxpayers Opposed to Giveaways, said it is possible the Columbia case, dismissed in Circuit Court in August for a failure to submit a required memorandum, could be revived, though he acknowledged that "it may be moot for us."
Still, he said, at the very least, the new decision may prevent a repetition of what he feels was the election board's "end run to disenfranchise people." His appeal won't likely be heard until year's end, Joyce said, and decided months later. Swatek said he hadn't read the decision.
Norman, who lost a Howard County petition signature battle in early 2009 over his union-aided attempt to place a county council zoning decision allowing a larger supermarket at Turf Valley on last year's ballot, said he has got appeals before both state and federal courts and now hopes to win the long fight. The Turf Valley case before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals is on hold awaiting a ruling from a federal appeals court, which held a hearing in December.
Norman initially submitted 3,301 signatures by Dec. 30, 2008, and the county board first found 2,601 valid, allowing Norman to collect the rest of the 5,000 required. But following discovery of a late 2008 Court of Appeals decision on another Montgomery County case requiring that signatures exactly match names on voter rolls, the board reversed course, rejected 85 percent of Norman's signatures in March 2009 and declared the entire drive invalid.
Frank Martin, another Turf Valley resident working with Norman, said that however things turn out, it is sad that what he feels is an erroneous interpretation of the law by the county election board "did not give the public a chance to vote on this."
But Helen Carey, a Turf Valley resident who supports the supermarket and shopping center, disagreed.
"I think it's been decided. This seems to be just another attempt to delay the project."