Richard’s ‘Filibuster’ Cuts Short City Council Business : Pasadena: Councilman takes over meeting and refuses to yield floor. Panel has voted to censure him twice in 10 months.

The Pasadena City Council abruptly cut short its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday after controversial Councilman Isaac Richard declared that he was conducting a filibuster and refused to yield to his colleagues, who had voted last week to censure him.

The disruption occurred about 30 minutes into the session. The council had considered only one item on a lengthy agenda--approving a measure to deprive Richard of travel expenses and free tickets to Rose Bowl events for a year.

Enraged, Richard blistered his colleagues as “self-important cowards” whose vote was “so clearly illegal, racist and overtly self-serving in terms of keeping the power structure intact.”

Then Richard, one of two African-Americans on the council, refused to allow discussion to proceed, threatening to spend the day reading aloud from “War and Peace.”

As council members filed out of the chamber, Richard said: “If you try to keep my district from being represented, nobody gets represented.”

Matters on the agenda were forwarded to next Tuesday’s meeting.

The council voted last week to censure Richard--for the second time in 10 months--after City Clerk Maria Stewart charged the councilman with sexual harassment for using obscenely sexual language to curse a group of city officials.

Richard said that he had only cursed City Manager Philip Hawkey, who had sought to prevent him from conferring with an investigator delving into contractual relationship between the city and the Tournament of Roses.

“I’ve done nothing criminal,” Richard said in an interview Tuesday. “For them to create a law to censure me for speaking out is unprecedented.”

Among the perquisites that Pasadena council members receive is an annual bloc of tickets to the Rose Bowl football game Jan. 1. Most council members distribute the tickets to constituents.

“To say that my district can’t have tickets to the Rose Bowl while everybody else can--I won’t stand for it,” Richard said.

The other six council members appeared to be stunned by Tuesday’s developments.