AGOURA HILLS : City Again Seeks to Quash Recall

The city of Agoura Hills has asked a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to reconsider her decision to order a recount of 94 signatures on a recall petition against Councilwoman Fran Pavley.

Judge Diane Wayne ruled in May that Agoura Hills and the County Registrar/Recorder’s office had abused their discretion by throwing out the signatures on a technicality. But the city says the recall group made misleading statements to the judge.

The city and county disallowed the signatures because the petition signers’ voter registration cards had not been submitted to the county by a Dec. 7 deadline. The recall group--which did in fact turn in the cards the next day--sued the city and county to force them to validate the signatures that had been thrown out.

The recall group leader, Barbara Murphy, said she failed to make the deadline because she was stricken with an attack of heart arrhythmia Dec. 7 while she was at City Hall turning in recall petitions. She said her husband, Hank, submitted the registration cards to the county the next morning.

Agoura Hills City Atty. Greg Stepanicich said the cards were actually turned in on the afternoon of Dec. 8, and not by Hank Murphy but by Barbara Murphy.

But the recall leader said she was at the county office on the afternoon of Dec. 8 to watch as the recall petitions were turned over to the county. She said she can’t remember for certain whether she turned in any voter registration cards, but that she may have submitted a few.

She said she could “swear to the fact” that her husband brought in most of the registration cards that morning.

Stepanicich alleged that Murphy led the judge to believe that she was incapacitated by the heart ailment when in reality she returned to City Hall after being treated at a hospital.

Murphy said she left Westlake Medical Center at 3 p.m. and that she did stop by City Hall for a few minutes on her way home because it was on the way.

“I stopped back by to let the people know I was OK, and then my husband took me home,” she said.

The group, Citizens Against New Local Taxes, launched the recall against the entire City Council after it passed a 4% utility tax in June, 1994. The group needed 2,405 signatures--or about 20% of the city’s registered voters--against each member, to force a recall election. It was 53 signatures short in the case of Pavley, the council member opposed by the largest number of petitioners.

During the raw count and validation, hundreds of signatures were thrown out on technicalities.