CITIZENS
for
Limited Taxation & Government
18 Tremont Street #608    Boston, Massachusetts   02108     (617) 248-0022
E-Mail:  cltg@cltg.org       Web-page:  http://cltg.org

NEWS ADVISORY
For Immediate Release
Friday, April 10, 1998

For Further Information Contact:
Chip Ford - (978) 538-3900
Barbara Anderson - (617) 248-0022

                         Lights! Camera! Action!
  

     What a campaign commercial opportunity this scene will provide us!

     Like a Cecil B. DeMille production of the ‘50s, "hundreds" of beleaguered voters from around the state will be dragged into Cambridge and marched through the courthouse doors beginning Wednesday morning — innocent hostages taken in the no-holds-barred war being waged for broken promises and higher taxes by the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

     As we and our attorney, Steve Epstein, battle to defend signatures of clearly registered voters who signed our petition, the teachers union continues its desperate tactics to get clearly registered voters’ signatures struck from the petitions on the most frivolous of technicalities.

     Suffolk Superior Court Justice Allan van Gestel on last Wednesday presided over the opening session of oral arguments in the MTA challenge of our A Promise to Keep: 5% income tax-rate rollback initiative petition.

     The team of five teachers union attorneys announced its intention to subpoena "hundreds" of citizens from across the state, voters whose only offense is having signed the initiative petition — and angering the teachers union.

     Mysterious agents of the MTA have swooped down on petition signers all over Massachusetts, deceptively identifying themselves on the phone as calling because "Barbara Anderson has challenged petition signatures and the Judge wants us to verify them."  They have sent out phony subpoenas faintly watermarked "Sample," and letters threatening a subpoena if the signer refuses their agent’s immediate visit to obtain an affidavit from them — then often failing to appear for appointments, knocking unannounced on signers’ doors a day later.

     They did their utmost on Wednesday to get Justice van Gestel to say he’d like the teachers union to call in their victims on Wednesday — but repeatedly he left that decision to them if that was their intent.

     The MTA intent simply is harassment and intimidation of defenseless citizens.  This will be graphically demonstrated next Wednesday morning on the 7th floor of the Middlesex Superior Courthouse in Cambridge, when the parade of signers begins.

     Lights! Camera! Action!   Cecil B. DeMille, with his "cast of thousands," couldn’t have provided a grander spectacle.

     The teachers union already has conceded 566 of the 1,833 additional signatures we contend are those of registered voters and should have been certified.  We expect to prevail over this costly harassment with at least 1,000 more signatures than required and to be on the November ballot.

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