Democracy 101: Obey Voters on 187 : The school board and the City Council are spending taxpayer funds to challenge the election’s mandate. Bizarre districting helps them get away with it.

In case you thought you missed something, the voters actually did pass Proposition 187 on Nov. 8! You’d never guess it though, watching the Los Angeles City Council and Los Angeles Unified School District squandering our tax dollars to challenge the overwhelming mandate.

Six of the seven members of the school board have arrogantly chosen to mount an attack against the voters. Four of these members, Mark Slavkin, Jeff Horton, Julie Korenstein and Leticia Quezada, supposedly represent parts of the San Fernando Valley. These political dictators must have been playing hooky during Democracy 101. Perhaps last week’s suit against the board by Glenn Spencer, president of the Sherman Oaks-based Voice of Citizens Together, will force them to face the reality that the people have enacted a new state law--and they, as creatures of a state charter, are subject to that law.

Perhaps part of the problem is a lack of accountability.

In 1991 the City Council seriously gerrymandered itself and the school district. It ignored the suggestions of Valley leaders for compact and contiguous districts, creating instead bizarre new LAUSD districts that diluted the power of West Valley voters with a West Los Angeles majority, and subjected East Valley voters to domination by a majority bloc in East Los Angeles.

Similarly, in the council, lines were drawn that minimized the number of Valley-majority districts.

Thus it is no surprise that neither the school board nor the City Council think it has to answer to Valley voters, who were behind Proposition 187 by an even greater percentage majority than the statewide electorate.

After the election, the City Council couldn’t wait to join the American Civil Liberties Union in a private plaintiff suit against the people of the state of California. In response to voter outrage, it wisely modified its position, ordering “that the City Attorney be authorized to take only the actions necessary to clarify the legal issues concerning those aspects of Proposition 187 that impact the City’s operations.”

Unfortunately, the significance of the motion was lost on City Atty. James Hahn. He has refused to abandon his crusade against this measure and last week was allowed by the court to join the case. In spite of his misguided arguments, it simply isn’t necessary to manufacture adversity to interpret a statute. An opinion of the attorney general should be sufficient--and a lot less expensive. Clearly, what singles out this statute for special attention is the not-so-secret agenda of a few of our Downtown politicians.

An initiative is supposed to be a way for the voters to work around unresponsive legislative bodies, like the council and the LAUSD. Since 1911 the initiative process has provided the people of this state with an essential democratic tool. Even the normally stoic California Supreme Court has heaped flowery praise on the initiative process, proclaiming that there is hardly anything more fundamental and respected than the “precious right” of the initiative. It should be “jealously guarded” as this is not a “right granted to the people, but a power reserved by them” as “one of the most precious rights of our democratic process,” the court has said.

By filing suit our local agencies are doing precisely what the initiative seeks to stop--spending scarce taxpayer dollars for the benefit of illegal foreign nationals. They are actively meddling in issues that are beyond the scope of their charters and are in violation of the voters’ undeniable mandate.

*

It is important to analyze what drives these distorted agendas. Many who feed at the government trough decry private -sector special interests but feel quite at home with public -sector special interests. They gain political strength by increasing government dependency among the population. Prior to Nov. 8, 5,470,000,000 people in the world were eligible to come to California for free, taxpayer-supported services. This provided an unlimited supply of potential dependents. Proposition 187 has now reduced that eligible number by more than 5 billion.

Tragically, the city is adopting ACLU positions and making arguments against our own interests. In sworn declarations filed with the court, Hahn and Police Chief Willie L. Williams provided unfounded opinions of the possible negative outcomes of enforcement of the measure. Our attorneys are going to look pretty foolish when they end up having to enforce the statute. If anything, they should be working with the attorney general as advocates for the will of the people, not opposing it.

With council and school board elections coming up in April, it appears that Valley voters will have to finish the job they started on Nov. 8.