LITTLE ROCK — The court battle over a constitutional amendment to allow higher retail interest rates moved Monday to the Supreme Court.
According to incomplete, unofficial results in the Nov. 2 election, voters approved the proposal, which was Issue 2 on the ballot.
The measure would allow higher interest rates on retail lending, remove the interest limit on government bonds and allow a way to finance energy-efficiency projects.
It passed with 64.16 percent of the vote.
The amendment was recommended to voters by lawmakers in April 2009.
Attorney Eugene Sayre of Little Rock filed a lawsuit Sept. 24 on behalf of April Forrester of Jacksonville against Secretary of State Charlie Daniels contending the description of the proposal on the ballot was “a manifest fraud” because it did not make clear that retail interest rates could rise to 17 percent.
The suit also said the measure exceeded the General Assembly’s authority to propose amendments by combining three issues into one. Lawmakers are constitutionally limited to proposing only three amendments per election, except under limited circumstances.
The case was brought in both Pulaski Circuit Court and directly to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruled in October that it did not have original jurisdiction over the case because lawmakers, rather than voters, referred the issue to the ballot.
Original jurisdiction is the authority to hear a case at its beginning instead of reviewing a decision made by lower courts. In the past the court has exercised original jurisdiction in lawsuits against constitutional amendments proposed by voters through the petition process but not constitutional amendments referred from the Legislature.
The court ordered the case first be heard in a lower court and appealed back to the Supreme Court.
Pulaski Circuit Judge Mary McGowan ruled on Election Day that the initiative’s ballot title was “complete enough to convey an intelligible idea of the scope and import of the proposed amendment,” and that the matters it contained were all sufficiently related.
The appeal notice was filed Monday in Pulaski Circuit Court. Forrester now has 90 days to have the court file certified by the circuit clerk and submit it to the Supreme Court.
“They seemed more receptive to some of the things we were arguing than Judge Mc-Gowan,” said Reba Wingfield, an attorney on the case. “This is a political hot potato and it’s a lot easier to let the Supreme Court handle it.”
The amendment says it becomes law Jan. 1. Wingfield said they will ask that the case be expedited.
The case does not go to the Appeals Court because Arkansas Supreme Court Rule 1-2 (a)(1) gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction over any appeal that involves the interpretation or construction of the state constitution.
Arkansas, Pages 16 on 11/30/2010