Supervisors sued to put general plan on June ballot

Carmel Pinecone
Posted March 3, 2006

By KELLY NIX

PROPONENTS OF the community general plan initiative filed a lawsuit against the Monterey County Board of Supervisors asking a judge to “command” the board to place the initiative on the June ballot, after supervisors Tuesday voted 3-2 to kill the plan.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by LandWatch Monterey County, Salinas City Councilwoman Jyl Lutes and several others, was a quick counterattack by the group, but not surprising.

“We started working on it last week,” Chris Fitz, executive director of LandWatch, said of the injunction.

Following Tuesday’s contentious three-hour meeting that drew jeers from supporters of the initiative, supervisors Butch Lindley, Jerry Smith and Fernando Armenta voted to quash the measure while Dave Potter and Lou Calcagno voted to place it on the ballot.

The suit, filed in Monterey County Superior Court, alleges supervisors were in “flagrant violation of the elections code” since they didn’t either adopt the measure or place it on the ballot. Supervisors cannot “unilaterally decide to prevent a duly qualified initiative from being presented to the electorate,” according to the lawsuit.

“These guys behaved like dictators,” Fitz said.

Tom Carvey, executive director of Common Ground and a member of the opposing group Plan for the People, said he’s not worried about the suit and believes voters would kill the initiative even if it were placed on the ballot.
“They are a very litigious group,” Carvey said of LandWatch. “Even though the initiative is fatally flawed, they are still trying to push it forward as if it was good policy.”

Potter, who helped launch the general plan petition, said the measure should have been given to the people to decide.

“I thought it was a politically insensitive not to allow the public to vote one way or another,” Potter said. “If the initiative it isn’t legal, let people vote and allow a court to determine if it isn’t legal.”

Studies swayed supervisors

Supervisors made their decision after hiring two independent firms to analyze the community general plan from a legal and economic standpoint. Their not-so glowing reviews were cited by the supervisors who voted to kill it.

“I’m just glad we did a fiscal and legal analysis,” Smith said. “It basically pointed out the fatal faults of the initiative, and it pointed out the deficiencies of the initiative and the damage it could do to Monterey County.”

San Francisco-based Nossaman, Gunther, Knox and Elliott outlined nine major problems with the initiative and said it may violate several state laws governing housing and expansion of cities.

The firm also said the initiative may be invalid because it’s inconsistent with the current general plan in several areas and because it allows no commercial or industrial land use category.

Rowdy crowd

Tuesday’s meeting drew about 180 people, mostly supporters of the LandWatch measure, who snickered and made catcalls at various times of the meeting, drawing ire from two supervisors.

“That was not a group that represented themselves well,” Smith said. “I was very disappointed.”

Fernando Armenta, after criticizing the measure, was temporarily silenced by jeers after he lamented the “costs and impacts” of the proposed ballot measure.

“They were doing it to most of the folks that came up to the podium,” said Armenta, who suggested police or security might be a good idea for subsequent meetings.

He and Smith said they believe the initiative will probably make it to the ballot.

Legal action must be quick

The reason initiative backers filed their suit so quickly is the deadline for supervisors to place the measure on the ballot for the June 6 election in March 10, the lawsuit says.

County counsel Charles McKee said the success or failure of the suit will depend, in part, on how quickly a court will hear it.

Although McKee didn’t know how much the legal wrangling would cost the county, he said if the plaintiffs win, the county will likely have to pay for their legal costs.

A separate lawsuit already filed in federal court alleges the signature gatherers broke the law by distributing the initiative only in English.

That suit would probably be moot if a court decided the measure shouldn’t be placed on a ballot, McKee said.