SIMI VALLEY : Candidate Protests Explicit Magazine

Steve Frank, a candidate for Simi Valley mayor, complained publicly Monday night that city officials have not removed a sexually explicit publication that is being sold in a local news rack.

At a Simi Valley City Council meeting, Frank held up a copy of Hollywood New Reality, an adult publication that he said he obtained from a vending machine outside a Simi Valley shopping center.

He said the magazine could have been purchased by any child with 75 cents.

Frank alleged that city officials are not enforcing local laws that would force the owner to remove the magazine from a public rack.

“Every day it’s there is another day this council is harming the children of Simi Valley,” he said.

But City Atty. John Torrance said Simi Valley’s news rack “blinder” ordinance, adopted in 1988, would not apply to the magazine that Frank displayed. That law requires that any publication determined under state law to be harmful to minors must be kept behind an opaque shield that blocks the lower two-thirds of the magazine’s cover.

Torrance said the portion of the magazine visible through the news rack targeted by Frank does not qualify for a blinder.

Mayor Greg Stratton said the city could face a costly free-speech lawsuit if it tried to remove the adult publication under present law.

Frank also suggested that the city take action against the operator of the news rack for failing to pay a city business tax.

Jocelyn Reed, who oversees the city’s code enforcement officers, said Tuesday that her staff was still trying to determine the identity of the news rack operator and whether the owner had paid the required business tax.