-- MEMO --
To: Tax Rollback Committee and petition drive distribution list
From: Barbara Anderson and Chip Ford
Date: September 21, 1999
Re: Report on Phase One of CLT's participation
The initiative petition for an income tax rollback was approved by
the Attorney General and delivered to the Secretary of State for printing. The Tax
Rollback Committee did an excellent job of preparing the petition and doing the necessary
paperwork.
While we waited for the petitions to be available, CLT prepared for
its part of the volunteer effort. In early July, Chip Faulkner began calling our key
activists, and in late July we sent a letter requesting volunteers to our 8,000 members.
We then called those who responded and asked for a signature pledge. By September 1 we had
a list of over 600 volunteers, so were able to pledge 30,000 certified signatures to the
fall campaign at that time.
Since then, we have added more names to the list, for a September 21
total of 700. We are confident that the 75,269 raw signatures pledged will translate to at
least 35,000 certified signatures [exceeding our pledge commitment].
We met with Republican campaign leaders at the Republican State
Committee office on July 7, July 23, August 17, and September 1. [State Republican
Party executive director] John Brockelman and [Tax Rollback Committee director]
Paul Melkonian have visited our office in Marblehead, and we met here with Rick Arnold and
Susan Johnson of National Voter Outreach on September 15.
The first problem we encountered was caused by the hurricane on the
evening of the Tax Rollback Committee's (TRC) campaign kick-off (September 16), and the
second by a breakdown of the printer that was putting numbers on the "G"
petitions to be used by TRC and CLT volunteers. When the petitions still weren't ready by
Friday afternoon (September17), CLT took them to our printer in Wilmington, who also
agreed to do the rest of the TRC numbering.
We picked up 7,000 petition sheets (numbers 1,001 - 8,000) Monday
morning (September 20) and by 4:00 PM over 3,000 requested forms in our petition packages
were mailed to our 700 volunteers.
CLT has 42 volunteer coordinators around the state for our petition
drive, who are expected to keep in touch with the volunteers in their areas throughout the
campaign. A mailing went out Wednesday to these coordinators, giving them the names,
addresses and phone numbers of the volunteers in their districts, along with a sample news
release.
-- END OF MEMO --
