Dawes County Clerk Cheryl Feist says opponents of Crawford Mayor Tom Phillips failed to collect enough signatures to force a recall election, but have already launched a second attempt.
Feist says chief circulator Lori Palomares had until next Friday to gather the valid signatures of 75 registered voters of Crawford, but submitted petitions with only 71 signatures and Feist ruled one of those was invalid.
Nebraska law allows Palomares to start another recall effort immediately and Feist says she filed the paperwork to do so on Thursday.
Palomares makes the same accusations in the new petition that she did in the first: Phillips doesn’t live in Crawford and has a potential conflict of interest from his wife doing the books for the city-owned Legend Buttes Golf Course.
The timetable for the new recall drive is the same as the first. Phillips has 20 days to respond to the filing with a statement that would be attached along with Palomares’ filing to the initiative petition itself.
Palomares will have 30 days after that to gather signatures, followed by 15 days for Feist to verify the collected signatures and determine if there are at least 75 valid ones – 35% of Phillips’ total in the 2022 election.
If there are enough, Phillips will choose between resigning or standing for a recall election with the city council having 21 days to set an election on the first available date at least 50 days in the future that complies with state rules for election dates.
The city will be responsible for setting the ballot language and paying for all election costs. If there is a recall election, it would be Crawford’s second in just over 3 years. Then-Mayor Connie Shell defeated a recall attempt in Jan 2021 with 57% of the vote.