Five residents have gone to court to fight Summit County Clerk Eve Furse’s position that some people signed standalone signature pages, separate from a packet, which she says forced her to invalidate thousands of signatures.
The decision has so far blocked the Dakota Pacific Real Estate development from being placed on the ballot for a countywide vote.
And unless a judge rules otherwise, it will stay that way. A hearing is set for Aug. 19.
July 22, petitioner Reed Galen told a committee of state lawmakers that’s not right because the law is “ambiguous” and Furse’s decision was “subjective.”
“That if in baseball, the tie goes to the runner, that in this case, the tie should go to the people,” Galen told the Interim Rules Review and General Oversight Committee. “That [Furse] should accept these signatures for validation, and when validated appropriately, put our measure on the ballot before the people this fall.”
Riverton Republican Sen. Dan McCay said he agreed “the tie should go to the runner,” and that was one reform he said legislators should take up.
The committee unanimously voted to open a bill file and begin drafting a few changes to state referendum laws.
Another possible reform could be clarifying whether signature pages must be permanently bound to a packet. In Summit County’s case, that packet included the development agreement the county council OK’d last December.
Furse previously said in a statement her office “has followed state statute as interpreted by our attorneys and the lieutenant governor's office.” She said photos she reviewed show signature pages unclipped from their three-ring-bound packet.
Former Park City Mayor Dana Williams told legislators he was in the photos Furse cited.
“The picture showed me at the table with some of the sheets in front of me. It didn't show that — right on the next table — I had the development agreement and everything else that we needed to make up, what legally thought, was the binding,” Williams said.
In court papers petitioners claim that in 25 of the 30 three-hole punched packets Furse did not accept, “none had signature pages that were removed from the packets while being signed.”
GOP Sen. John Johnson, whose district includes Summit County, and McCay observed that residents who sign the petition are signing that “I have personally read the entire statement included with this packet.”
“Now, let's be honest. How many people actually read the lengthy development agreement subject to the code? Probably not very many,” McCay said. “So the difficulty I have is: it's this idea of balancing the ease of signature versus the law's requirement that people have the full information to know exactly what they're signing.”
Lawmakers said they could also consider changing the law to say residents need the opportunity to read the packet, but are not obligated to.
Separately, on July 28, Summit County may approve a new development agreement with Dakota Pacific under a 2025 state law designed to greenlight the development. The law also says that the new agreement wouldn’t be subject to a referendum.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW. For a full list, click here.
