Surf City sues its own clerk

Paul Clinton

The ongoing political battle over whether to divide Surf City into

five council districts has turned into a family feud, with Huntington

Beach City Atty. Jennifer McGrath advising the city to sue City Clerk

Connie Brockway to invalidate a controversial initiative.

McGrath decided the city should sue Brockway, along with the

initiative’s author, Scott Baugh, so that a court judge could order

Brockway to remove the measure from a March 2004 ballot.

“The clerk must be included so it could be implemented,” McGrath

said about any future judge’s order. “They are the ones who place it

on the ballot. They would also be the ones who would remove it.”

On Sept. 5, the city initially sued Baugh and Orange County

Registrar Rosalyn Lever to overturn a measure that would reduce the

City Council from seven to five members and modify the city’s term

limits law.

McGrath and her staff contend Baugh’s measure is unconstitutional

because it violates the state’s “single subject” rule, which requires

initiatives to stick to one issue. It’s the same argument airport

boosters used to successfully defeat Measure F, Deputy City Attorney

Scott Field said.

“This does encompass more than a single subject,” Field said. “The

issue of [suing] the city clerk is not significant at all. The real

issue is that the [state] Constitution provides that the constituent

can’t include one attractive item and then sneak something in that

the voters would not support.”

Baugh, a former assemblyman and lobbyist, led a push to gather

signatures for the proposal, which was set to be on the November

ballot, but was derailed Aug. 5 when the council elected to postpone

it until 2004.

Baugh said the city’s lawsuit is a political ploy to “suppress the

will of the voters.”

“They’re just trying to find a way to sabotage this any which way

they can,” Baugh said. “Bottom line, they’re threatened. They’re

afraid of this initiative.”

Brockway, who has held her elected office since 1988, said it was

the first time that she has been sued by her own city.

“I’ve never had it happen before,” Brockway said. “I understand

the city has to do it ... It’s not that I’ve done anything wrong in

conducting an election.”

After circulating his measure, Baugh submitted it to Brockway. On

July 16, Brockway phoned Baugh to tell him he had collected the

required number of valid signatures, Brockway wrote in a July 18

letter.

Lever’s office validated 16,768 names, 540 more than were

required. Baugh needed 15% of the registered electorate. Baugh and

his supporters gathered 23,000 names, he said.

The city’s suit is, admittedly, a gamble, Councilwoman Debbie Cook

said. Yet, Cook, who was the only council member to support putting

it on the ballot in November, said the measure was “tampering with

something that wasn’t broken.”

“I thought it should go on the ballot immediately,” Cook said.

“Obviously, the public might support one of two [of the items], but

not the third.”

Councilman Dave Sullivan would not have been eligible to run for

office in November if the initiative were in place, since he had held

a seat for eight years. The city’s term limits law, put in place in

the mid-1980s, limits council members to two consecutive terms. The

initiative would cap council service at two terms.

“I think the council is doing a responsible thing in trying to get

that issue adjudicated ahead of time,” Sullivan said about the city’s

lawsuit. “There’s nothing more disturbing than for people to go out

and work for something, then to have it be a waste. It undermines

people’s confidence in the system.”

* PAUL CLINTON is a reporter with Times Community News. He

covers City Hall. He may be reached at (714) 965-7173 or by e-mail at

[email protected].