BY SARAH ROSS

NEWBERG- A lawsuit filed against the City of Newberg over an initiative petition ended at the Yamhill County Circuit Court on Tuesday, requiring the City to approve the petition which they have rejected numerous times.

Hank Grum joined forces with Common Sense for Oregon, a conservative advocacy group, to file suit against the city after five similar initiative petitions were rejected by Dawn Wilson, the Elections Officer for Newberg.

Grum’s last petition, called the “Tax and Fee Responsibility Amendment,” would have put on the ballot an initiative requiring the City to put all proposed increases on taxes, fees, or other charges to be brought up for approval by Newberg voters.

Wilson turned down the petitions, saying they did not meet the Oregon Constitution’s one subject rule, which mandates that all petition initiatives revolve around a single subject.

As ruled by the Circuit Court Judge Cynthia Easterday, Grum’s petition did discuss a single topic, “the mechanism for increases in taxes, fees, or any other charges adopted by the council.”

“They are all actions by the city to generate revenue,” wrote Easterday in Tuesday’s opinion letter.

The final issue with Grum’s petition was whether or not the proposed initiative was legislative or administrative in nature, affecting whether it was the type of proposal that should be brought to the voters.

Easterday decided that because the petition was intended to change the legal framework of whether the City Council could impose taxes and fees, rather than how the fees and taxes are carried out, it is indeed legislative.

She went on to add, “The fact that the conduct of the City government may be seriously hampered if the petition went forward by changing the process in which taxes, fees or any other charges could be increased is not an issue that the court may consider in its analysis as to whether or not the petition is legislative or administrative.”

Ross Day, Executive Director of Common Sense for Oregon and the attorney that represented Grum, said he was not surprised by the ruling, saying, “The law is pretty clearly on our side.”

Day added he wasn’t sure why the City took the position that it did, but he thinks “this will end up being an expensive lesson for the citizens of Newberg.”

“This case is important because it guarantees that the city charter is the people’s city charter,” said Day. “Otherwise, had the City prevailed, citizens of Oregon would have been severely restricted on their ability to amend their own city, and probably even county, charters.”

Newberg’s City Attorney Terrence Mahr was not able to be reached for comment.

However, Tom Sponsler, the attorney representing the City of Newberg, said he was disappointed with the ruling because he thought the “eloquence would carry the day but apparently didn’t.”