Malibu to Turn to High Court in Cityhood Fight : Incorporation: Arguing that voters’ rights have been violated, lawsuit will ask Supreme Court to order county officials to stop delaying cityhood.

Angered by Gov. George Deukmejian’s veto of a measure that would have allowed Malibu to become a city immediately, the community’s unofficial City Council said this week that it plans to turn to the California Supreme Court in a bid to speed incorporation.

City Atty. Michael Jenkins said a lawsuit on behalf of the council-elect, to be filed in the next few days, will ask the high court to order Los Angeles County officials to stop delaying and clear the way for cityhood on the grounds that voters’ rights have been violated.

“Voting for something and then being told you can’t have what you voted for frustrates the right to vote no less than if people had never been given the opportunity to vote at all,” Jenkins said.

Although 84% of Malibu voters approved cityhood in June, the County Board of Supervisors delayed the actual incorporation date until March in an effort to start work on a controversial sewer system before a new city government has the chance to block it.

By taking its case directly to the state’s high court, cityhood backers hope to incorporate well before the March 28 date set by the supervisors.

“If it helps us to get cityhood just one day sooner, it will have been worth it,” Mayor-elect Walt Keller said.

Meanwhile, the council-elect said it will return to the state Legislature when the lawmakers reconvene in December to push for a measure similar to one the governor vetoed Saturday. The measure, by state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), would have nullified the county’s authority to delay incorporation until next March.

“Our aim is to have a new bill ready by the time a new governor is inaugurated in January,” Councilman-elect Larry Wan said.

An aide to Davis said the senator has already offered to help a second time, as has state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), whose district includes Malibu.

Malibu leaders roundly denounced Deukmejian for the veto, accusing the governor of caving in to political pressure from county officials who lobbied hard for the veto.

In his veto message, Deukmejian said that since voters were aware when they went to the polls that cityhood was to occur in March “it would be inappropriate to now change the date of incorporation contrary to the understanding of the voters.”

Although the ballot statement said cityhood would occur March 28 if incorporation were approved, a Superior Court judge had ruled a month before the June 5 election--after the ballots had already been prepared--that the county’s bid to delay cityhood until March was invalid. It wasn’t until July 27 that a state appellate court ruled otherwise.

“If the governor really meant what he said, it’s hard to believe he could have been so misinformed,” Councilman-elect Mike Caggiano said. “Everyone in Malibu was aware of the court ruling. The people who voted for cityhood fully expected that it would occur within a reasonably short time after the election.”

However, an aide to the governor expressed a different view.

“What the voters had in front of them when they went to the polls was the March 28 date, and that’s what they voted on,” spokeswoman Anita McKenzie said.

Deukmejian also vetoed a related measure that would have prevented the county from issuing building permits in Malibu beginning in December, thus posing a threat to the county’s ability to speed construction of the sewer.

An existing law, due to expire Dec. 31, allows counties to continue issuing building permits in communities where voters have approved cityhood but where incorporation has not yet taken place. The vetoed measure would have excluded Malibu from this law. A lawyer for the county said this week that the county now retains the authority to issue new building permits in Malibu until cityhood occurs, even if that is not until late March. However, Assistant County Counsel Bill Pellman said the county “may decide” to stop issuing new building permits in Malibu in the near future. He said new permits issued where construction has not already taken place by the time Malibu becomes a city will become void on that date.

Some Malibu cityhood backers, including several members of the council-elect, have expressed a different view, saying they understood that the county would no longer be able to issue building permits in Malibu after Dec. 31.

Even if the incorporation measure had become law, county officials had hinted that they might still try to stall cityhood long enough to gain the approval of the California Coastal Commission to start work on the sewer.

By law, the supervisors must adopt a final resolution confirming the incorporation before cityhood can occur. Although strictly ministerial, the action is essential to incorporation. Cityhood supporters have expressed concern that the supervisors might try to withhold the resolution as a way to delay cityhood even beyond March 28.

However, Pellman dismissed such a move. “That’s not in the cards,” he said.

County officials hope to go before the Coastal Commission in November for permission to start work on the sewer system without having to wait for several incremental approvals that could ordinarily be expected to take several months to obtain.

The state panel’s decision could be crucial to the county’s chances of starting construction of the $43-million sewer before Malibu becomes a city. Malibu’s government-in-waiting has said it will try to persuade the commission not to grant the county’s request.

The lawsuit that the council-elect intends to file would join several others aimed at either preventing the sewer from being built or speeding incorporation.

The Malibu Township Council, a slow-growth group, has filed a lawsuit to block the sewer, saying that the environmental reasons the county cited for wanting to build it are bogus. Residents of Malibu Country Estates have filed a lawsuit that would prevent the county from building a waste treatment plant--the system’s centerpiece--near their million-dollar homes. The plant site, which the county intends to acquire by condemnation from heirs of the late Merritt Adamson, is zoned for residential use.

Meanwhile, the Malibu Committee for Incorporation, which brought the lawsuit aimed at nullifying the delay of cityhood, has appealed the appellate court ruling to the California Supreme Court.