D.A. Checks Eligibility of Carson Petition Circulators

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is reviewing allegations that some people who gathered signatures for a ballot initiative to eliminate much of Carson’s mobile home rent-control ordinance were not residents of the city, as required by state law.

The allegations were brought to the district attorney’s office by City Clerk Helen Kawagoe, a mobile home resident who has been accused of bias by supporters of the ballot measure. Kawagoe has denied any bias.

Kawagoe, whose office checks petition signatures, announced Aug. 5 that the measure was 39 signatures short of the 3,892 names--10% of the city’s registered voters--needed to qualify for the ballot.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Sowders, chief of the agency’s special investigations division, said a deputy district attorney and an investigator have been assigned to check Kawagoe’s allegations. He said the agency has investigated similar allegations in other campaigns and has occasionally filed charges.

“The most widely known is the AIDS initiative of 1986,” Sowders said. “We filed criminal charges against three people. The case is pending.”

State law requires that people who circulate petitions sign statements under penalty of perjury that they are registered voters in the area affected by the proposed ballot measure--in this case, Carson. Most of the signatures were gathered by a San Diego-based firm that specializes in initiative campaigns.

Ann Stewart Brown, a Sacramento-based political consultant who is spokeswoman for the mobile home park owners who hired the firm, said she doubts that the district attorney will find much behind allegations that petition circulators committed perjury when signing statements that they were residents of Carson.

“I really don’t think that anyone meant to do anything like that, so I am not really concerned,” she said.

The city clerk’s complaint to the district attorney’s office is the latest in a series of actions that have put her at odds with the proponents of the ballot initiative.

The first episode occurred after the petitions were turned in to the city clerk July 5. Initiative supporters, who faced August deadlines for getting the measure on the ballot in November, chafed when Kawagoe decided that the 1,430 sheets of petitions had to be copied before they were taken to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder for checking. Kawagoe’s office took a week to do the copying.

Signatures Checked

On July 26, Kawagoe announced that a signature check by the registrar-recorder showed that the petition failed by 60 signatures to reach the 3,892 required. She said county elections officials had found that about half of all signatures had been turned in by invalid circulators, but none were disqualified for that reason. Many were thrown out because checkers could not find any record that the signer was a registered voter.

The petition proponents immediately began rechecking signatures ruled invalid and said their check showed that Kawagoe--who has the final say on a signature’s validity--had incorrectly ruled in many cases.

In a brief court appearance Aug. 2 aimed at getting a court order to validate several dozen signatures, the proponents accused Kawagoe of using a double standard when checking signatures supporting the petition and those of people who later wished to withdraw their names from the petition. They said she voided supporters of the petition on technicalities but used a more lenient standard for people who wished to withdraw their names. The judge threw the case out, saying a court order would be premature because Kawagoe had not completed her work.

A few hours after the ruling, Kawagoe said at a City Council meeting that as a result of the recheck, initiative proponents were only seven signatures short of the required number, not 60.

No Explanation

But on Aug. 5, Kawagoe said the effort to obtain signatures of 10% of the registered voters of Carson had failed by 39 signatures. Kawagoe left town that day and did not explain why the two tallies differed.

At the Aug. 9 council meeting, she presented figures showing that after continued rechecking of signatures, the proponents had 16 more than required to get the measure on the ballot.

But in her report to the council, Kawagoe said she was ruling out 55 previously approved signatures for reasons that had not come up before. She declared 30 signatures invalid because they had been gathered before the date the petition was first published as a legal notice. And she voided 25 signatures because they had been gathered after the date stated by the circulators.

The result, she said, was that the petition failed by 39 signatures.

Brown said Kawagoe should not have ruled out the 55 signatures because of errors made by the circulators. She said judicial decisions in California have favored petition gatherers on the grounds that the right to decide measures on the ballot hinges on the validity of the signatures of people who sign petitions, not on the qualifications of circulators.

“I wish she just had the district attorney investigate and put the thing on the ballot, as she should have done,” Brown said.

Recheck Prevented

She added that since Aug. 5, Kawagoe has prevented supporters of the petition from continuing to recheck signatures. She said the proponents are considering a suit in an effort to get the petition validated. If they succeed, the measure would go on the ballot in April, 1990, during the municipal election.

According to the initiative, people whose incomes fall under federal poverty guidelines would remain under rent control. For a four-person family, the limit on annual income would be $19,150; for an individual, it would be $13,400.

Rents for people not meeting the poverty guidelines would not be controlled except for the first two years after the measure takes effect. During those first two years, annual increases would be no more than 9%.

Under Carson’s rent control ordinance, rent hikes are pegged to increases in the expenses of operating a park and to any capital expenditures made by a park owner.

Parks May Close

Mobile home owners say rent increases would be more than they can afford. Park owners note that several parks have announced plans to close and say rent control is driving them out of business.

According to campaign finance reports, Concerned Citizens of Carson, the group behind the petition, is financed entirely by the Colony Cove and Carson Harbor mobile home parks, the largest in the city. The two parks contributed $26,565 to the effort, according to the report.

Opposing the initiative is Homeowners Against Rent Decontrol, which reported contributions of $9,936.72, including a $1,000 contribution from the Golden State Mobilehome Owners League and $8,707.92 in contributions of less than $100.