Bias Charges Lead Carlsbad to Scrap Flyer on Voter Issues

City officials have scuttled a controversial voter pamphlet that was designed to educate citizens on four local ballot issues, including two competing city growth-control propositions on the Nov. 4 ballot.

City Manager Frank Aleshire said that a county district attorney’s opinion that the pamphlet was biased in explaining two opposing ballot measures dealing with growth controls had prompted his decision not to send the flyer out to about 16,000 Carlsbad homes. The decision, Aleshire said, was his own.

“We could have changed the wording in the pamphlet and had it reprinted to meet Mr. (Deputy Dist. Atty. James) Hamilton’s criticisms,” Aleshire said, “but it would take too long and the material would not be distributed in time to be of much use to voters.”

At issue was the wording on Propositions E and G. Backers of Proposition G, a citizen-sponsored initiative that proposes tough residential construction limits, charged that the city pamphlet offered complicated wording that obscured the purpose of the proposal and would have confused voters. A competing and less restrictive growth-control measure, Proposition E, was placed on the Nov. 4 ballot by the Carlsbad City Council. The measure receiving the most votes more than a majority will become law.

Last week, Hamilton informed Carlsbad officials that the pamphlet contained biased and therefore possibly illegal statements about the competing proposals.

“It is difficult to see how the pamphlet in and of itself could possibly pass judicial approval as an impartial analysis,” Hamilton wrote.

Hamilton said that, in his opinion, the voter pamphlet “clearly suggests a ‘yes’ vote on Proposition E and a ‘no’ vote on Proposition G even though it does not expressly advocate either.”

Controversy over the pamphlet was heightened when city officials refused to give copies to the public or to newspaper reporters, but Aleshire said Friday that the booklets, although they will not be mailed to voters, have been declared public documents and can be obtained by anyone upon request.

“We do not agree with the district attorney’s interpretation, but we realize that to distribute the pamphlets would probably open the city to a taxpayers’ suit,” City Atty. Vincent Biondo said.

“We disagree with his (Hamilton’s) opinion,” Biondo said, “but he’s entitled to it.”

The pamphlet was labeled “a propaganda effort by the city to manipulate the voters” by Nelson Aldridge, co-chairman of Concerned Citizens, one of the two grass-roots groups sponsoring Proposition G.

Biondo countered that he and other city officials consider Proposition G “unreasonably restrictive” and possibly unconstitutional in its limits on the number of residential units that can be built.

The proposition specifies that a maximum of 1,000 dwelling units be built in the city during 1987, 750 in 1988 and 500 a year through 1996.

Aldridge and other Proposition G backers contend that the measure is patterned after growth controls enacted in the city of Camarillo that have been found to be workable and legal.

Proposition E, the growth-control measure backed by a majority of the Carlsbad City Council, does not place a cap on residential construction but specifies a limit of 54,599 housing units within the city, which would mean a population limit of about 135,000. It is designed, backers stress, to allow city services to keep pace with population growth.

Aleshire said that the voter pamphlet, which cost about $5,000 to print, “taught me one lesson. It taught me to leave the explanations of election issues to the politicians.”

However, he said that he plans to issue “a couple of press releases next week” to put the brouhaha over the growth-control issues in perspective and to explain “why we think their proposal is illegal.”