CITIZEN INITIATIVES FOR NOV. 2 SET RECORD

Two decades ago, Virginia Jenkins built a home at Lake Tahoe, where
she planned to live out her retirement.

But after 18 years of skyrocketing property values, Jenkins, 77, said
she couldn't afford the taxes any longer. She sold her Lake Tahoe home
and bought a small house in Caughlin Ranch.

Now, Jenkins said, she wants to help put on the November ballot an
initiative petition proponents say would slow increasing property-tax
rates and prevent more people from having to sell their homes.

"Every month prices go up and up and up, and our income doesn't," she
said. "We're just sitting here running out of money."

The petition, started by Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, R-Reno, is one
of a record number of citizen initiatives seeking various amendments
to the Nevada Constitution.

From legalizing marijuana to prohibiting public employees from
serving in the Legislature, the 12 petitions circulating in Nevada run
the gamut of the political spectrum.

But as the June 15 deadline nears to gather the 57,000 signatures
needed to put the questions on the Nov. 2 ballot, groups are turning
to creative tactics to convince people to sign their petitions.

Angle, for example, has hired two temporary employment agencies to
recruit workers to collect signatures in 13 of Nevada's 17 counties --
a legal requirement to qualify for the ballot.

George Harris, chairman of Nevadans for Sound Government, is pleading
with a district court judge for more time to gather signatures on a
petition to repeal the $833 million tax hikes approved by the
Legislature last year. He claims government employees have harassed
his volunteers, preventing them from turning in their petitions by the
May 18 deadline for a referendum.

Others, including the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana,
have hired a savvy political consulting firm that employs an army of
Palm Pilot-carrying signature gatherers to go door-to-door asking
registered voters to sign.

"The beauty of a state like Nevada is that ordinary citizens can enact
their own laws and constitutional amendments," said Billy Rogers,
whose Las Vegas firm, The Southwest Group, is collecting signatures
for four of the petitions.

"I'm not going to say what we're doing is easy. They make it purposely
difficult to get an initiative on the ballot. If it were easy, we'd
have 100 initiatives every year to vote on," Rogers said.

Those circulating the petitions said voter dissatisfaction with the
Legislature is spurring the onslaught of proposed citizen
legislation.

"It's a result of the last legislative session, when you had a
minority of legislators controlling the majority," said Danny
Thompson, secretary-treasurer of the Nevada AFL-CIO, which is backing
the petition to raise the minimum wage. "That is why you are seeing a
lot of people doing things outside of the legislative process."

Last year, 15 Assembly Republicans forced two special sessions by
attempting to block the $833 million tax package.

"It's the best way to inform legislators about what their priorities
need to be based on the needs of the public," said Claudia Briggs,
spokeswoman for the Nevada State Education Association, which is
circulating a petition to increase education funding.

This year, voters might be faced with more citizen initiative
questions on the ballot than any other election in the past decade.
Voters must approve a constitutional amendment twice before it is enacted.

Of the 12 petitions circulating, it is likely that at least six will
make it to the ballot because the organizers are paying a firm to
deliver the signatures. They include initiatives to:

- - Make it legal for adults to possess 1 ounce of marijuana and to
toughen penalties for driving under the influence of marijuana and
providing the drug to minors.

- - Raise the minimum wage in Nevada to $1 above the federal minimum
wage of $5.15 an hour. The wage increase would be waived if the
employer provided medical insurance.

- - Make lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits responsible for any legal
fees incurred by the person sued.

- - Roll back casualty insurance rates.

- - Force lawmakers to fund the education budget before any other
function of state government. Organizers, including Assemblywoman Dawn
Gibbons, R-Reno, and her husband U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., turned
in nearly 90,000 signatures last week to be verified by county voter
registrars across the state.

- - Require lawmakers to fund education at the national per-pupil
average.

Angle also said she is confident she will gather enough signatures for
her petition using temporary workers. Under the proposal, which is
similar to California's Proposition 13, a 1 percent property tax would
be levied on the 2001 assessed value of a home. The assessed value
only could climb as high as the Consumer Price Index for that year or
2 percent, whichever is less.

Three petitions that would repeal the record tax hike approved in 2003
appear to be dead, unless a Clark County District Court revives one of
them at a hearing Friday by granting Nevadans for Sound Government an
extension.

Two other anti-tax petitions were dropped by Nevadans for Tax
Restraint earlier this year.

For a second petition that would prohibit government employees from
serving as lawmakers, Nevadans for Sound Government is relying solely
on volunteers to collect signatures -- a feat some political
consultants say is impossible to achieve.

Harris said if his volunteers hadn't been harassed by government
employees, they could've easily gathered enough signatures. His group
is asking for an additional 60 days to gather signatures on both the
anti-tax and public employees petitions.

"With all the people we lost by them threatening to put people in jail
. they've arrested four people for the high crime of gathering
signatures," Harris said.

Two volunteers, Janine Hansen and her son, Zachary Triggs, were
arrested last month while collecting signatures at the downtown bus
station in Reno. Two other volunteers were arrested in Las Vegas on
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus during a rally for first
lady Laura Bush.

Signatures for an initiative petition to ban smoking in public places,
except bars and casinos, aren't due until Nov. 8. That measure
proposes a new statute from the 2005 Legislature rather than a
constitutional amendment.

Some of the initiative campaigns are well financed, such as the
marijuana petition, which will benefit from nearly $400,000 in
television ads that have been ordered to run in Reno since January
through August.

Those ads are funded by the Marijuana Policy Project, a national
political nonprofit agency that also sponsors medical marijuana
initiatives in two other states. Nevada voters overwhelmingly rejected
a similar measure floated by the group in 2002, which would have made
it legal for an adult to possess 3 ounces of marijuana.

Bruce Mirken, communications director for Marijuana Policy Project,
said the ads are part of "an educational campaign" designed to urge
voters to rethink the nation's current policy on marijuana.

Gibbons estimated she spent about $200,000 on gathering signatures,
and Angle said she has a goal of $100,000 in contributions.