Description Upheld for Rent Ballot Measure
The city of Santa Monica will not be forced to alter its description of a controversial June ballot measure that would permit landlords to raise rents on vacant apartments, despite last-minute efforts by the measure’s backers.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Warren Deering ruled that the city’s ballot description of the Tenant Incentive Program is sufficient. He refused to force the city to say that the plan would provide cash payments to tenants.
The backers, a landlord organization known as ACTION (A Commitment to Insure Owners’ Needs), had asked the judge to change the ballot description. Spokesman Geoffrey S. Strand said the organization will not appeal Thursday’s decision.
But Strand said landlords will go back to Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday to argue that City Atty. Robert M. Myers’ “impartial analysis” of the measure is “prejudicial and intended to confuse voters.”
Strand said landlords will ask the courts to rewrite the analysis, which is included in voting pamphlets. “The analysis is not impartial,” Strand charged. “The city attorney’s office has attacked this measure violently.”
Myers said his office was pleased that the court rejected arguments against the city’s ballot description. He said he would vigorously defend his written analysis of the Tenant Incentive Program, which comes before voters June 3.
“We are hopeful that the efforts of the landlords to censor the viewpoint of the city attorney will be unsuccessful,” Myers said.
Friday’s court hearing on the Tenant Incentive Program will be the fourth in three weeks. Backers say the plan, which would amend the portion of city law that prohibits landlords from raising rents on vacant apartments, guarantees that portions of the profit would be distributed to tenants.
The City Council, which unanimously opposes the plan on grounds that it would weaken rent control, placed the measure on the ballot after backers gathered enough signatures to force a vote. But Myers concluded, in a legal opinion, that the measure did not provide for any tenant compensation.
On March 18, tenants affiliated with Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights sued to have the Tenant Incentive Program removed from the ballot, calling it fraudulent. A Santa Monica Superior Court Judge denied the request, but said the measure had “many flaws, uncertainties and failures.”
In a separate case on Monday, backers of the plan asked Deering to rewrite the city’s ballot description. Acting on Deering’s orders, the council on Tuesday agreed to remove the words decontrol and recontrol. But it did not honor the backers’ demand to acknowledge cash payments to tenants.
Backers reappeared before Deering on Thursday, but this time were unable to force further changes in the description. Strand said the group decided against appealing Thursday’s decision because it was convinced that the city would force it to wage a lengthy and expensive court fight.
Strand said his organization has determined that it will be more successful in attacking the impartial analysis because it contains the same words, decontrol and recontrol, that Deering ordered the city to remove from its ballot description.
Under the Tenant Incentive Program, backers have said that an apartment owner would be forced to share the profits from his rent increase with his remaining “qualified tenants” by multiplying the amount of one month’s rent increase by 10 and dividing the sum among the building’s qualified units.
For example, a landlord who raised the rent on an apartment by $400 a month would divide $4,000 among his tenants one time, according to the landlords. An apartment owner would not be allowed to raise his rent if the vacancy was the result of an unfair eviction as determined by the city’s Rent Control Board and the unit would be under rent control again once the rent had been raised, they have said.
