Ballot Effort on Funding Services to Aliens Fails : Illegals: Mayor claims that councilman’s proposal for vote on denying money to groups that aid them has wide support but is unenforceable.

City Councilman Orville Amburgey was defeated in his attempt this week to place a measure on the Nov. 6 ballot that would ask residents whether the city should withhold federal money from agencies that serve illegal aliens.

The council voted 2 to 2 on the proposal, with Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle absent, effectively killing Amburgey’s plan. Mayor Peter F. Buffa, who originally favored such a policy, voted against the measure with Councilwoman Sandra L. Genis.

“You’re asking for an answer that we already know,” Buffa said. “I do feel that a majority of the residents of our community would like not to see public funds go to illegal aliens.” But, he said, the problem is enforcement.

“We have found no workable way to do it,” he said.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp issued a directive June 22 saying that HUD grant money could not be withheld from public service groups or programs that serve illegal aliens. The city had attempted to bar organizations from receiving federal grant money unless they agreed not to serve known illegal aliens.

In early June, HUD general counsel Frank Keating said cities could enact such a policy without violating anti-discrimination laws, but he was overruled by Kemp.

After the meeting Monday, Amburgey said he would continue to pursue the matter until the courts can determine whether such a policy violates anti-discrimination laws.

He also suggested that residents gather signatures to force a special election on the issue.

In a July 26 letter to Kemp, Richard Higgins, executive director of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said the city of Costa Mesa “has been left in the dark” regarding whether such a policy is legal. He asked Kemp to inform city officials about whether HUD would withhold federal block grant money in the future if it were to enact the anti-alien funding policy.

“To this point, no one has said it is illegal,” Higgins wrote, adding that his organization has told Amburgey that it “would be interested in helping Costa Mesa pursue relief through the courts.”

The council, Buffa in particular, has voiced concern over the possibility of HUD withholding Community Development Block Grant money if the city enacts an anti-alien policy. In addition to supplementing the budgets of local public service agencies, including Share Our Selves and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the money is used for projects such as sidewalk and alley repairs.

At the last council meeting, on July 23, Amburgey unsuccessfully tried to have the city staff revise the original council policy passed last August so that federal money would go only to agencies that normally do not serve illegal aliens. Under the revised policy, groups that assist illegal aliens could then be funded through city sales tax revenues.