San Diego

The San Diego City Council, with Councilman Bruce Henderson absent, deadlocked Monday on accepting the ballot language rewritten by the city attorney’s office for two competing growth-management measures.

After an acrimonious debate, council members voted 4 to 4 on the two proposals, which had been redrafted by city attorneys after complaints about the ballot language from a citizen’s group that sponsored Proposition J, one of two slow-growth measures on the November ballot.

Proposition J is competing with Proposition H, the growth management issue drafted by the City Council. The sponsors of Proposition J had complained that the two measures, as printed on the proposed sample ballot, sounded too similar. The group threatened to sue the city if changes were not made in the ballot language to distinguish the two proposals.

The city attorney’s office rewrote the measures, to the satisfaction of Proposition J backers but not to the satisfaction of some City Council members. By deadlocking on the rewritten measures, the council in effect voted to keep the original proposals on the ballot, with the old language.

On Monday, backers of Proposition J said they will ask the Superior Court today to stop the city from printing descriptions of the two measures unless clarifications are included to distinguish one from the other.