Moore Sues to Oust Green From Council : Dispute: Former councilwoman claims 1st District seat was not vacant when mayor appointed political unknown to it. State attorney general says courts should decide.

Former Councilwoman Patricia A. Moore filed suit in Compton Superior Court this week in an attempt to oust Ronald J. Green from the council seat he was appointed to in June.

The suit, approved by state Atty. Gen. Daniel E. Lungren, claims that the 1st District seat was not vacant at the time Green was appointed.

If a court finds that Green’s appointment was illegal, he could be removed from office and every vote he cast invalidated.

Green said the lawsuit has no legal merit. “This is just politics,” he said. “Pat Moore’s allegation is not founded in fact.”

The question of whether Green was properly appointed revolves around a series of actions the City Council took on June 8, one week after a city election.

That election saw Moore pitted against Omar Bradley, councilman for the 1st District, in a bitter fight for the mayor’s job. Bradley won the post, which had been vacant since Jan. 1, when Rep. Walter R. Tucker III (D-Compton) left for Congress.

Bradley was scheduled to be sworn into office July 1, along with two new councilwomen: Marcine B. Shaw, who replaced Moore, and Yvonne Arceneaux, who beat Bernice Woods in the 3rd District.

During the June 8 meeting, however, Bradley voted with Woods and Jane D. Robbins to appoint himself to fill the three weeks remaining in Tucker’s term. They then declared Bradley’s 1st District seat vacant and appointed Green, a political unknown in the community. Moore abstained from the votes, although she suggested Kenneth Tucker should be appointed to the office. Her motion died for lack of support.

Under Compton’s City Charter, an appointment must be made within 30 days after a seat becomes vacant, or the seat must be filled by election. Therefore, Bradley’s appointment as mayor was not legal because the council had to act by Jan. 31 to appoint someone to Tucker’s seat, said Moore’s attorney, Phillip K. Fife.

Although the council declared Bradley’s seat vacant after appointing him mayor, he never submitted a formal resignation, Fife argues, and so never officially left his 1st District seat.

Bradley says the voters elected him mayor and he voted for his own appointment at the urging of supporters who said the city had been too long without a leader. He added that in voting to declare the 1st District seat vacant, he in effect resigned.

“It’s a question of semantics,” Green said.

“The issue here is abandonment,” Fife said. “We’re saying Bradley never truly abandoned his office. You have to ask, if Mr. Bradley had been told that his appointment to mayor had been void, do you think he still would have voted to vacate his office? I think it’s clear that he wouldn’t.”

Bradley’s political rivals say the action was a blatant attempt by him to shore up his slipping council majority after the defeat of Councilwoman Woods. With Woods leaving and two new council members coming in, Bradley had Green appointed in hopes he would vote with him and Robbins, Moore has said.

This council has been far less divisive than past councils, however. Few votes have ended in a 3-2 split, and it is unclear if any decisions would be affected if Green’s appointment and votes were invalidated.

Bradley denies the theory he was shoring up support. Although Green is the one named in the lawsuit, Bradley says the legal action is aimed at him.

“It’s become politically vogue to attack Omar Bradley,” Bradley said, alluding to a recent uproar over anti-Semitic comments he made during a council meeting. “What’s clear is that Patricia Moore wants to be a councilwoman again.”

Both Bradley and Green said they were confident the case would be decided in their favor, particularly because two conflicting opinions were mailed out of the attorney general’s office.

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The first opinion, mailed Oct. 10, said Bradley should not have been appointed to the remaining mayor’s term, but Green was legally in office. That document was accidentally sent out before it was approved, said Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Rodney O. Lilyquist.

A second opinion, issued Nov. 10, gave Moore permission to sue and said a court should decide the legality of Green’s appointment. The attorney general must give permission before a person can file a lawsuit that challenges an official’s right to hold office.

“We don’t have a problem here,” Green said. “There was a 10-page draft opinion, with the attorney general’s signature, issued in our favor first. Now if they want to say that was a 10-page typographical error with (Lungren’s) signature, that’s something they’re going to have to explain in court.”

Neither opinion from Lungren’s office bore his actual signature, and a clerk called both parties shortly after the Oct. 10 document was mailed to warn them the opinion was not official.

Still, Bradley charged that Lungren succumbed to political pressure, sometime between the first and second opinions.

“What made Dan Lungren change his mind? I think it’s obvious that someone got to him,” Bradley said.

Lungren was not available for comment, but Lilyquist said he knew of no political pressure in the case. There was disagreement in the attorney general’s opinion unit, which drafts legal opinions, he said, so two documents were drafted. The one rejected by Lungren was accidentally mailed out by a new clerk, Lilyquist said.

“This has never happened before,” Lilyquist said.

No court date has been set to resolve the issue. Attorneys for Moore said the case should go before a judge quickly, but Bradley said he expects the remainder of time left in Green’s term, about 18 months, could easily pass before a court decides the question.