Calabasas Cityhood Hearing Is Delayed

Calabasas cityhood boosters said Saturday that they are looking for legal ways to combat a court order issued Friday by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge that postpones a critical hearing on the incorporation effort.

The Local Agency Formation Commission, the Los Angeles County agency that oversees the creation of cities, had been scheduled to decide Wednesday whether to allow residents in an 11-square-mile area of Calabasas to vote on incorporation in June.

“I can’t imagine being sandbagged worse than this,” Ed Dilkes, attorney for the Calabasas Cityhood Study Committee, said of the court order. Although the cityhood proponents said they are still committed to incorporation, they believe that chances for a June election are now slim.

Judge Miriam Vogel issued the temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit filed Friday challenging the constitutionality of a wild-lands protection law written by state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia). Vogel scheduled a second hearing Feb. 24 to determine if there are grounds for challenging the Davis measure.

Fire Cost Limits

The law would have aided the Calabasas incorporation effort by substantially reducing the new city’s fire protection costs. Essentially, it limits the amount that the county can charge for wild-lands firefighting.

Davis sponsored the measure last year after proponents of cityhood in Calabasas and Santa Clarita complained that the county had dramatically increased the charges that new cities would have to pay for fire protection. The cityhood supporters charged that the costs were increased mainly to prevent the new cities from incorporating in areas where developers wanted to build.

Developers, the supporters say, would prefer to see areas such as Calabasas remain unincorporated because they fear that a new city might curtail building. Santa Clarita became a city in December after its area was pared considerably by the county agency.

Friday’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of Rita N. Humphrey, who was identified only as a “Los Angeles County taxpayer” by her attorney, Douglas R. Ring. The suit names both Los Angeles County and the Local Agency Formation Commission as defendants.

Ring said he believes that the wild-lands protection law violates other state statutes that prohibit gifts of public funds.

He is also an attorney for the Irvine-based Baldwin Co., which has proposed building a major housing and commercial development in the Calabasas area. Baldwin, however, does not want its land made part of the new city and has asked to be excluded.

Ring refused to say Saturday whether Baldwin is behind the lawsuit.

“We want to find out if the Davis bill is lawful,” he said.

Although they are determined to fight the suit, cityhood boosters said that it could cause them to miss a March 11 deadline to quality the cityhood issue for the June ballot.

“We’re just appalled,” Dilkes said. “The Calabasas people have proceeded in good faith, and then this happens.”

Supporters of incorporation also charge that the county kept the lawsuit a secret so that they would not be present at the court hearing. Dilkes said he and leaders repeatedly left messages last week for an assistant county counsel when they heard rumors of a lawsuit.

None of the calls was returned, Dilkes said.

Attorney Kenneth C. Wikle Jr., who wrote the fire-protection bill for Davis, characterized the suit as the latest attempt by developers and the county to ensure that Calabasas remains unincorporated.

“It’s outrageous,” Wikle said. “Now they have a lawyer on the payroll of a highly interested developer bringing this . . . lawsuit that the county is not opposing. . . . The developers in Los Angeles County have the best government money can buy. Here we have just another example of that.”