2 Groups Aid Push for Malibu Incorporation

In its battle to become a city, Malibu found new allies this week.

Two municipal government organizations--the Los Angeles Division of the League of California Cities and the Contract Cities Assn.--started lobbying to speed up cityhood for the famed beach community.

The league sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors urging immediate incorporation of Malibu, and League President Hal Croyts urged the 84 member cities to pass their own council resolutions supporting Malibu.

Malibu residents voted overwhelmingly in June to incorporate, but the Board of Supervisors, which has resisted the cityhood effort for years, invoked a novel legal interpretation to postpone the date of incorporation until next March. Last month, an appellate judge ruled that the county had sufficient legal grounds for the delay.

“It is unfair to the residents and their newly elected representatives to delay implementation (of cityhood),” said the league’s letter, which was signed by Croyts, a Lomita city councilman. “What’s at stake here is the right of the people to govern themselves. The people of Malibu made a decision to incorporate and the county of Los Angeles shouldn’t interfere with it.”

The 70-member Contract Cities Assn. was also preparing a letter to the board this week, according to Sam Olivito Jr., executive director of the statewide group. “We’re firmly in support of a community’s effort to self-governing,” he said. “We’ve been watching this situation all along, and we decided to take action after the July 18 court ruling delaying cityhood until next year.”

The two letters coincide with a mail campaign launched Tuesday in Malibu to get a state law passed to let the area incorporate now. The council-elect urged residents to flood Sacramento legislators with letters in support of a bill by state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita) that could go to the Assembly floor as early as today and to the Senate next week.

The bill would allow Malibu to incorporate next January instead of in March. An emergency clause approved by the Senate Rules Committee Tuesday would let the community incorporate immediately, but that provision needs a two-thirds vote from both houses for passage.

The legislative session ends Aug. 30, “so we haven’t much time,” said Malibu lobbyist Anthony Gonsalves. “But we’ve got equity on our side.”