Wording of Statement on Ballot Challenged : Elections: Sentence offered by school board candidate is attacked, and now the proposed revision is also called false and misleading.

Saying that a candidate’s wording is false and misleading, the Ventura County superintendent of shools on Wednesday legally challenged the sample-ballot statement of a Ventura woman running for the county school board.

Elections officials said it may be the first time anyone has filed such a legal claim in the county.

Angela Miller, a conservative Christian candidate running for the County Board of Education, wrote in her campaign statement that county school trustees allowed Supt. Charles Weis “to waste taxpayers’ money” when he fired his political rival, Dan Flynn, in late June.

Miller indicated the county board spent money to settle a lawsuit by Flynn challenging his firing.

But no such lawsuit has been filed.

When the county schools office telephoned Miller last week about the error, she agreed to take the legal steps necessary to change her statement before sample ballots are printed and mailed to voters beginning in late September.

“I found out the way I worded a sentence was not correct,” Miller said Wednesday. “I made a righteous error.”

But now the attorney for the county schools office says Miller’s proposed revision to her campaign statement is just as false and misleading as the original.

Miller, a 43-year-old homemaker, is challenging county schools Trustee Juanita L. Sanchez-Valdez for her seat in the district representing Ventura and Oxnard.

All candidates in local elections have the opportunity to pay for statements of up to 200 words that are published as part of the sample ballots mailed to all voters. The cost ranges from $150 to $3,200 per statement, depending on the office being sought. Miller paid $1,000.

The offending sentence in Miller’s original campaign statement read: “Recently the board allowed the superintendent to waste taxpayers money for a lawsuit/settlement after firing a political opponent.”

Her proposed replacement: “The board’s flagrant failure to review Flynn’s firing or hold Weis accountable has resulted in a probable costly lawsuit.”

But Jackson Parham, the attorney for the county schools office, said county school board members have no authority to review personnel decisions.

“If you have no authority to review something, how can it be ‘a flagrant failure?’ ” Parham asked. Miller’s proposed revision, he said, “is an unfair, false and misleading statement.”

Rather than allow the revision to appear in sample ballots, Parham said the county superintendent’s office will ask the Ventura County Superior Court to delete the sentence from Miller’s written statement.

Miller’s case is scheduled to come before the Superior Court on Sept. 8--one day before the deadline for printing all sample ballots for the November election.

“It’s our point of view that she can delete the sentence and that’s all she has to do,” Parham said.

But Miller, a Flynn supporter, has other ideas.

She contends the question of whether the county school board has any authority over personnel decisions at county schools is a matter for debate.

Flynn, a former county schools principal, lost his job after unsuccessfully challenging Weis for his job in the June 7 election.

Flynn learned on June 23 that Weis was canceling his employment contract effective July 1.

Although Weis said the firing was due solely to Flynn’s poor performance as principal of the county’s schools for juvenile offenders, Flynn’s supporters contend the move was politically motivated. They urged the county school board to review Weis’ decision.

County trustees--some of whom expressed concern about the firing--briefly looked into the matter but decided the law gives county school boards no authority over a superintendent’s personnel decisions.

Miller and some other Flynn supporters argue that the question of the board’s authority is ambiguous.

And Miller said the county schools office has no power to force her to change her proposed revision to her campaign statement unless they can prove she is wrong in implying the board has some legal authority over personnel issues.

Any voter has the right to challenge the accuracy of a campaign statement prior to the printing of sample ballots, officials said.

Bruce Bradley, the county’s assistant registrar of voters, said this is the first time that such a legal challenge has been filed in the county during his 14 years in the elections office, or possibly ever.

But he said such challenges will probably become more commonplace as an increasing number of candidates choose to buy space on sample ballots to get their message to voters. About 150 campaign statements were filed for the November election contrasted with only 25 in last November’s balloting.