Inquiry Sought on Fireworks Petition Drive’s Legality

San Fernando city officials asked the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office Thursday to investigate whether fireworks company employees who gathered enough petition signatures to suspend the city’s ban on fireworks sales violated voter registration laws.

Meanwhile, City Administrator Donald E. Penman said the petition was filed just in time--with only hours to spare--to prevent the city’s ban on fireworks sales from going into effect.

A top officer of the Los Angeles City Fire Department, which pressured San Fernando for years to enact the ban, reacted angrily. He revived a Fire Department threat to refuse to provide fire protection in San Fernando after a service contract expires June 30.

The fireworks prohibition was to have become law Thursday. But the petition was filed late Wednesday afternoon by two employees of Freedom Fireworks of Norwalk and Pyrodyne American of Fullerton. It asked that the City Council repeal the ban or place the issue before the voters.

Suspends the Law

Under state law, such a petition, if it appears to have the signatures of at least 10% of a city’s voters, suspends the law it is targeting until the issue is settled, Penman said.

As a result, “the old ordinance allowing fireworks sales is still in place,” he said, even though San Fernando has yet to verify the signatures.

But San Fernando officials are challenging the validity of the petition itself. They question whether the sponsors are legal residents of San Fernando and whether they personally collected all the signatures. State election codes stipulate that petition sponsors and those gathering signatures all be registered voters in the city affected by the petition.

The two men who circulated the petition, Daniel J. Wilson and Jess Paul Engler, only last week registered as San Fernando voters, according to records kept by the Los Angeles County registrar of voters. They listed their residence as 618 Lazard St., the home of San Fernando Planning Commissioner Helen Arriola and her husband Ralph, executive director of the Latin American Civic Assn.

Cathy Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State March Fong Eu, said the district attorney has to decide whether to prosecute for voter registration fraud. But, she said, if Wilson and Engler “don’t live there, and they don’t have the intention of remaining there or returning there, we are talking voter fraud.”

Wilson and Engler could not be reached for comment.

Their supervisor, Jerry Farley, director of government relations for Pyrodyne American and Freedom Fireworks, said the two were paid between $6 and $7 an hour to circulate the petition. He said they had obtained permission from Ralph Arriola to use his address on their voter registration papers.

“I don’t believe that they are actually living there” with the Arriolas, he conceded.

“Quite frankly, I don’t care where they are living,” Farley said. He said he did not believe their use of the address violated any laws.

Ralph Arriola said Thursday he did not have time to talk about the issue.

Bowed to Threat

In January, the council abolished a decades-old tradition by banning the sale of Fourth of July fireworks, bowing to a Los Angeles threat to discontinue Fire Department service to San Fernando if sales continued. Fireworks have long been prohibited in Los Angeles as a fire and safety hazard, but Los Angeles residents annually flocked to San Fernando to buy them.

Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Dean Cathey called the repeal petition unconscionable.

“What we have here is literally an industry with a gun in the back of the city of San Fernando,” Cathey said. “They are saying ‘we are going to use you as a front to make our stand.”’

San Fernando has no fire department, and relies on a contract with the Los Angeles Fire Department. Although the Los Angeles City Council will make the ultimate decision, Cathey said, it is unlikely that the contract would be extended if San Fernando continues to allow fireworks sales.

The fireworks prohibition affected about 20 nonprofit civic and church groups that raised funds by selling fireworks. Penman said about $700,000 worth of fireworks were sold last year, with between $300,000 and $400,000 going to fireworks firms, and from $5,000 to $20,000 each going to the civic and church groups.

Farley said representatives of the two fireworks firms contacted charitable groups that had previously sold fireworks, seeking support for the petition, which requires the City Council to repeal the law within 30 days or schedule a referendum. He said most groups approved of the idea, but none volunteered to sponsor the measure.

Several groups contacted by the Times Thursday expressed mixed feelings about the repeal petition.

Robert Richards of the Knights of Columbus said his group fully supports the petition because the fireworks ban lowered its revenues by $20,000 this year, forcing it to dramatically cut community programs.

Ironically, only one of the groups that traditionally sold fireworks could benefit this year from the repeal.

City law requires that applications for fireworks sales permits be filed between March 1 and March 15. The only group that did so this year was the San Fernando Building Lodge Assn., in partnership with the Order of DeMolay, a Masonic youth group.

Finley Hoffman, who works with both organizations, said fireworks industry representatives encouraged him to apply for a sales permit before the deadline because they said the ban might be lifted.

The San Fernando Chamber of Commerce has not taken a position on the issue. The Kiwanis Club supports the council ban.

The referendum is both a business decision by the fireworks firms and a move to support San Fernando residents who want the law repealed, Farley said. He said the fireworks firms believe it is poor government policy to allow “the city of L.A. to muscle San Fernando into doing what it wanted.”