The City of Madison has put off a pretty strong public demand for a public vote on the special maintenance fee that the city wants to impose on property owners for road repairs. The City has claimed the pretext of seeking an attorney general's opinion on whether this new tax is a referrable legislative decision or a non-referrable administrative decision.
On a pure snark level, note that at the May 20 Madison City Commission meeting, when petitioner George Lee promised that the new fee would face a referendum, no one on the commission warned Lee that a referral might not be legal. Either this administrative-action argument only popped into the commissioners' heads after passage of the special maintenance fee, or they kept this card up their sleeve just to let protesters go through the petition process for naught.
Permit me to be generous: Madison's commissioners really may not know if a referendum applies here. They are dealing with an entirely new and untested law. The special maintenance fee is one of the special assessments authorized by 2012 House Bill 1156, brought to you by a unanimous Legislature and Governor Dennis Daugaard. 2012 HB 1156 repealed a bunch of statutes and created a bunch of new ones.
Section 66 (out of 158) of that bill became SDCL 9-43-148, which authorizes municipalities to assess special maintenance fees "upon the lots fronting and abutting any improvements within the municipality that are maintained by the municipality." Such fees are to be used "for the purpose of maintaining or repairing public improvements." (Citizens concerned about Madison monetary monkeyshines will be relieved to know that SDCL 9-43-124 restricts the transfer of special assessment money to any other municipal fund; if assessed, Madison's special maintenance fee can only pay for road work, not a bronze statue of Jerry Prostrollo riding a buffalo down the median of Highway 34.) The resolution creating Madison's special maintenance fee specifically cites SDCL 9-43-148 as its authorizing legislation.
That citation makes answering the whole referendum question easy. Section 14 of 2012 HB 1156 created SDCL 9-43-86:
Twenty days after publication of the adopted resolution of necessity, unless the referendum is invoked or unless a written protest is filed with the finance officer signed by the owners of more than fifty-five percent of the frontage of the property to be assessed, the governing body may cause the local improvement to be made, may contract for the improvement, and may levy and collect special assessments as provided in this chapter.
There's your answer, Mayor Lindsay. The new special assessments chapter says a referendum can delay implementation of special assessments like Madison's maintenance fee. Call off the Attorney General, stamp those petitions, and hand out ballots!