GARDEN GROVE : Council in Conflict Over Ballot Wording

Four city council members, upset about the wording of Councilman Bob Dinsen’s proposal to change the city’s water billing system, said this week they will take their concerns to court.

Mayor Bruce A. Broadwater, with councilmen Ho Chung, Tony Ingegneri and Mark Leyes, directed the city staff at Tuesday’s City Council meeting to ask a Superior Court judge whether Dinsen’s election guide statement about the 1996 March ballot initiative is factual.

Dinsen and a group of supporters want to eliminate a $1.35-million fee that the city now levies on the water department, saying that the money is used to help pay for street paving and other services.

In the ballot statement, Dinsen describes the fee as a “utility tax.”

Broadwater, Chung, Ingegneri and Leyes, who want to keep the billing system the way it is, object to Dinsen’s use of the phrase “utility tax,” arguing that there is a legal distinction between a tax and a fee. The four say that Dinsen is misleading the voters.

“Garden Grove has never had a utility tax,” Broadwater said.

Under Proposition 62, a state initiative upheld earlier this year by the California Supreme Court, governments must receive voter approval for all taxes but not for fees, City Atty. John Shaw said.

Dinsen dismissed the complaint as a matter of semantics. “It’s hard to tell a tax from a fee,” he said. “It all comes out of your pocket and goes to pay for a service.”

State election code dictates that the courts arbitrate such disputes, Shaw said.

He said he expects the matter to come before a judge within 30 days.

At the mayor’s request, the city will hire independent counsel to represent the majority of the council at hearings on the matter.

Dinsen said his group will not hire a lawyer. “I think we have everything on our side. They are hiring an attorney because they don’t have to pay for it,” he said.