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LAS VEGAS (AP) — State Controller Ron Knecht said Wednesday that he's abandoning an effort to repeal Nevada's new commerce tax because a recent court setback made it too difficult to gather the signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot.
The move announced to supporters Wednesday marks the end of a monthslong battle that pitted Knecht against Gov. Brian Sandoval, a fellow high-ranking Republican who championed the tax as a way to pay for a slate of education initiatives approved last year.
Knecht urged supporters to work so that in the primary, "the treacherous and misguided politicians who perpetrated this pernicious idea are replaced by people we may be able to trust."
More than two-thirds of the Republican-controlled Legislature voted in favor of the tax, which applies to businesses that make more than $4 million in Nevada-based revenue each year. Opponents say the tax, the smallest of the three-part, $1.4 billion revenue package, was a betrayal after voters roundly defeated a margins tax on the 2014 ballot.
Knecht spearheaded a mostly volunteer effort to repeal it, while a group funded mainly by large casino companies fought in court to preserve it. Tax opponents had gathered about 20,000 signatures when the Nevada Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the petition needed to be rewritten and the signatures on it were invalid.
To get the repeal on the November ballot, tax opponents would face the daunting task of gathering more than 55,000 valid signatures by June 21. The conservative group Americans for Prosperity was going to send an experienced team to help gather signatures, but it pulled out after the high court ruling, according to the Nevada Appeal.
Knecht said he was suspending the effort "in order to keep people from spending their valuable time that cannot achieve the public-interest goals we share and to keep them from experiencing the frustration that would be inevitable."
Knecht described the high court justices as "loyal members of the establishment" who had "manufactured a bogus excuse" to hamper the referendum. He vowed to continue "the war against the predatory selfish special interests (the political establishment) ... with renewed vigor."
Supporters of the commerce tax say it's a vehicle to broaden Nevada's tax base and improve the state's low-ranking education system. They called Knecht's effort misguided and destructive, and they warned of unintended consequences to changing tax policy by the ballot rather than through the legislative process.
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