Published on: Friday, September 03, 2010

By Glynis Kazanjian

The Montgomery County Volunteer Firefighters and Rescue Association filed suit against the county board of elections Tuesday in response to the board’s rejection of a petition to place the issue of an ambulance fee on the fall ballot. The underlying basis of the suit challenges the county board’s ruling that the association, the petition’s sponsor, failed to submit “a sufficient number of valid signatures” to meet certification requirements.

“The action we have taken today is designed to give voice to the more than 50,000 county residents who signed the petition to put ambulance fees on the November ballot,” association President Marcine D. Goodloe said in a written statement released Tuesday.

The suit alleges that the standards used by the county board of elections, under the direction of the state board of elections, were “more restrictive than required under Maryland’s election laws and violate the right guaranteed in Article XVI of the Maryland Constitution of citizens to petition to overturn enactment of state legislative bodies.”

The suit also claims the standards used by the county board to validate signatures were inconsistent with the court case the standards were derived from a 2009 Maryland Court of Appeals case, Doe v. Montgomery County Board of Elections. In the suit, the association asked the court to direct the county board to apply a “correct standard in the review of the signatures” submitted by the firefighters association and asked for an expedited response due to the pending November elections.

Washington-based law firm Skadden Arps is representing the firefighters association pro bono. The attorney handling the case, John Bentivoglio, a 21-year veteran volunteer firefighter and paramedic, said it should take only days to receive a response from the court due to the timing of the election.

“The election provides for expedited consideration of suits challenging petition issues, because if we’re successful, the ballot would need to be printed and distributed well in advance of the election,” he said.

According to a board of elections document included in the complaint, of the 20,719 rejected signatures, 13,240, or approximately 63 percent, were rejected because of problems related to the signature itself.

“Not only do you have to print your name the way it appears in the voter registry, but your signature must be such that it is legible enough to match the printed name. It is clearly stated in the court of appeals decision in Doe versus MCBOE,” county election board spokeswoman Marjorie Roher said.

Instructions to sign legibly do not appear on the referendum petition form used by the firefighters association. According to a document included in the lawsuit, the petition form the association used is the state elections board’s version of the petition form. The form does provide in the signature box, “Signature, Same As Printed.”

 “The guidelines we put out, we did so in consultation with the Attorney General’s Office in an effort to reflect the opinion of the court of appeals in how that law was supposed to be implemented,” state board of elections spokesman Jeff Goldstein said.

Karpinski said he did agree with the signature-verification standards used in the petition verification process.

“I’ve reread Doe more times than I care to remember. I’ve compared it with the state’s petition verification procedures, and I believe the state has accurately reflected what is required under the Doe decision,” he said.

On Aug. 23, legal counsel for the county board of elections announced it could not certify the petition to allow the question of the newly passed ambulance fee to appear on the November ballot. The petition sponsor, the announcement stated, did not have the minimum number of valid signatures required to meet the first submission benchmark of 15,366 valid signatures.

The firefighters association submitted more than 33,700 petition signatures by the first deadline, Aug. 4. However, under the new signature-verification guidelines imposed by the state board of elections, more than 60 percent of the signatures were rejected; only 13,021 signatures were validated. In total, the petition sponsors submitted more than 50,000 signatures.

“We’ve been opposed for more than 20 years on a moral, philosophical and ethical reasoning. We don’t want anybody hesitating because of fear of charges, whether it’s rational or not. That has been our fundamental opposition to charging for any emergency services,” said firefighters association Executive Director Eric Bernard.