Discovery of Vote Miscounts Shakes Up Makeup of Board

Will the real North Hollywood Project Advisory Committee please stand up?

Until this week, it was a tough question to answer.

Last month, a disgruntled faction of the North Hollywood PAC accused officials of miscounting votes, and during a fractious meeting flatly refused to seat five members recently elected to the panel.

Other members of the committee, which advises the Community Redevelopment Agency on North Hollywood issues, stormed out in protest, calling the group “subversives” and likening their actions to those of communist governments in Eastern Europe.

But, as it turns out, the “subversives” were correct.

The city attorney this week determined that ballots from an election in February were indeed improperly counted and that five new members of the committee did not really win enough votes to be elected.

But the city attorney also found similar problems with a 1991 election. The result? Three members of the faction that refused to seat the now discredited five are not even members themselves.

Consequently, Los Angeles City Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the area, has appointed himself acting chairman of the committee until a special election can be held to elect new members.

“It’s so astounding,” said Mildred Weller, who was part of the faction that seized control last month. “City Hall is admitting that they made a mistake. We got so much flak from this, I really feel so vindicated.”

The city attorney’s findings are the latest development in a long-running and often volatile struggle between anti-redevelopment and pro-redevelopment forces for control of the committee, and some say the ballot controversy might prolong the battle by casting doubt on past North Hollywood PAC elections.

“We may find it prudent to question every election that was ever held,” Weller said.

The findings confirm “what we were trying to prove all along--that the CRA has been manipulating these elections to suit themselves for 12 years,” she said.

The committee has no legislative powers but advises the CRA on redevelopment in a 740-acre area of North Hollywood. Residents have fought for control of the panel for years--sometimes literally. A fistfight broke out at one meeting a few years ago.

In the latest dispute, Weller and five other members of her anti-CRA faction argued that the February election results were invalid because officials discarded unmarked ballots while tallying the results.

The committee bylaws require that those elected receive a majority of the eligible registered voters, Weller said. But because several blank ballots were not counted, five of the winning candidates received a majority of the votes cast but not a majority of the total number of registered voters.

In response, Weller and her faction commandeered the February meeting, refusing to seat the five candidates in a session at St. David’s Episcopal Church punctuated by shouting matches and walkouts.

After the meeting, Ferraro asked the city attorney to review the matter.

In a letter to Ferraro this week, Dov Lesel, assistant city attorney, agreed with Weller and the others, saying “. . . a candidate must receive a total number of votes that is equal to or greater than the number which would represent a majority of the eligible voters present.”

There are now eight legal members on the committee and the committee must have at least 15 to transact business, Lesel said. Any actions taken at the meeting last month were not valid, he said.

Jerry Belcher, CRA project manager, said the results of past elections have been tallied by discarding blank ballots “for as long as I can remember. . . . We never looked it up.”

A special election will be held in May to fill the vacancies now on the committee, Ferraro aide Renee Weitzer said.

“We’re hoping to really get a new start with this,” Weitzer said. “We’d like to see a full PAC be elected.”

But Weller said her group has an attorney investigating the findings of the city attorney’s office as well as the decision by Ferraro to appoint himself or an aide to chair the committee.

“The PAC is a community organization totally separate from the City Council or the CRA,” said Weller, who was elected committee chairwoman at the last meeting. “Our preliminary investigation shows no legal basis for the councilman to assume leadership of this PAC.”

Weller also questioned the ability to recall committee members 14 months after the election. “We believe the time limit has passed,” she said.

If those members were not actually members, the issues they voted on and the actions they took as members of the North Hollywood advisory committee are all now in question, Weller said. “There are a lot of legal issues here.”

Belcher said the city attorney’s findings did not invalidate the past actions of the PAC. “We don’t feel their counsel or advice is any less meaningful,” he said.