Citizens Deserve an Unbiased Ballot

City of San Diego voters will have a difficult enough time this November slogging through the 100-plus pages of the sample ballot and sorting out the campaign hype and rhetoric surrounding two competing growth-control measures without having the city attorney skewing the ballot language.

While dedicated voters will study the full text of the two growth-control measures, many may make their final decisions based on the brief ballot wording, which shortchanges the citizen initiative and overstates the City Council measure on a key element.

Probably the greatest strength of the citizen-sponsored measure is that it sets strict standards for air quality, water supply, traffic congestion, sewage treatment and trash disposal, and gives them some teeth by limiting the number of houses that can be built until the standards are met. The city’s measure, on the other hand, merely sets out goals in those areas without requiring that they be met or tying the goals to the number of building permits that are approved. It is one of the city measure’s weak spots.

Yet the ballot language only makes passing reference to unnamed standards in the citizens’ initiative while it enumerates the city’s goals, and what’s worse, erroneously calls them standards.

In addition, the ballot wording on the city measure spells out what is meant by sensitive lands, i.e. wetlands, flood plains, steep slopes, biologically sensitive lands and significant prehistoric and historic sites, while the wording on the citizen measure just refers the reader to the initiative.

Deputy City Atty. Ted Bromfield has rejected a challenge of the language by Citizens for Limited Growth, the sponsor of the citizen measure. That leaves the organization with no remedy other than a court order, which would have to be obtained by Sept. 12 to give the registrar of voters sufficient time to print the ballot.

That’s a major task for the relatively small citizen group, which may be forced to reserve its resources for the fall campaign, when it will be outgunned by the well-financed opposition of the building industry and much of the established business community.

Citizens for Limited Growth should not have to take the city to court. The city attorney should put aside any loyalties to the council measure and reconsider the wording so that voters get an unbiased ballot.