Both suits were filed by the same law firm (Coppersmith Brockelman), representing the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the hospital executive salary cap measure, and the Arizona Restaurant Association challenging the minimum wage measure.
As discussed in the earlier article, the two new challenges contain MOSTLY general allegations about petition circulators and the signatures. This is partly because Arizona law now requires a challenge - to the legitimacy of the circulators - within 5 court days.
However, the complaints appear to also claim that the Secretary of State's Office has incomplete databases about paid and/or out of state circulators.* (Arizona's Politics has asked the Secretary's Office for a response and will update as warranted.)
The suit against the hospital salary initiative has a couple of specific allegations not made in the other suit (against minimum wage). The Chamber alleges that the initiative's committee was never properly registered and that all signatures therefore must be thrown out. It also claims that the petition forms did not substantially comply with the statutes because they had 12 (instead of 15) signature lines and because they did not have a required warning (unlawful to sign before initiative is registered with the state).
* It is unclear from the complaints how that might impact the complaint, as it would appear that if the circulator did register (as alleged), not being included in the database would not disqualify the registration (to remove the signatures he or she collected).
(Disclosure: Arizona's Politics co-founder Paul Weich represents a petition gathering firm involved in the minimum wage initiative.)
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