City Clerk to Decide Fate of Reform Measure

The ongoing saga of Mayor Richard Riordan’s government reform initiative took a decidedly political turn Wednesday when the City Council instructed the city clerk to decide once and for all whether the petition qualified for the ballot.

The petition to create a government reform panel has been in limbo for days because neither City Clerk J. Michael Carey nor the county registrar-recorder were willing to take the responsibility of certifying the controversial petition for the ballot.

Although the council put an end to that question, it did not end the ongoing political struggle involving the petition drive. The council, which has its own competing reform plan, also directed Carey to use standard municipal election rules in counting the signatures--and those rules could keep the measure off the April ballot.

Under city rules, Carey would have to throw out up to 430 signatures collected by petition circulators who are apparently not registered to vote in Los Angeles. City election rules mandate that the city only accept signatures collected by registered voters. State election rules, however, do allow those signatures to be counted.

Carey has said that without the 430 disputed signatures, the petition falls 90 signatures short of qualifying, based on a random sample check of 3% of the signatures.

The next step would be to verify at least 197,000 of the 304,000 signatures submitted by Riordan and his supporters--a task that most likely would cost at least $260,000 and take about 30 days. Such a delay would keep the measure from appearing on the April ballot.

The county registrar-recorder was pulled into the dispute after the city asked that agency to verify signatures on the ballot.

But Riordan supporters are not giving up. They began meeting with city and county election officials Wednesday to argue that some of those 430 signatures should be counted because they believe the circulators are, in fact, registered voters.

“We bent over backwards to make sure that the circulators were registered voters and lived in the city,” said Studio City attorney David Fleming, who teamed with Riordan to launch the reform initiative.

He predicted that enough of the disputed signatures would be counted and the measure would qualify “within the next day or two.”

But Fleming and other Riordan supporters said politics had much to do with the council’s decision to use city election rules to certify the petition.

Councilman Joel Wachs, the only council member who supports Riordan’s initiative, was the lone vote against instructing Carey to certify the petition using city rules.

He said state rules should apply and the disputed signatures should be counted so voters can finally decide on the reform proposal.

“Certainly, some council members would like to keep this off the ballot for as long as possible,” he said.

But Councilman Mike Hernandez, a vocal Riordan critic, dismissed charges that the council was playing politics with the initiative.

“From our perspective, we want to get this on the ballot and we want to get on with this as soon as possible,” he said.

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He said Riordan was the one playing politics with the initiative by hiring petition circulators who were not registered to vote in the city.

Hernandez and most other council members have criticized Riordan’s initiative drive--funded by the mayor with $400,000 of his own money--claiming it is a veiled effort to rewrite the city’s governing charter to increase his own authority.

In response to the mayor’s initiative, the council, city attorney and controller appointed a 21-member advisory committee to propose ideas for rewriting the charter.

Riordan has criticized the council’s panel, saying it cannot propose true reform because it is beholden to the council. Riordan’s initiative would ask voters to create an independent, elected panel that could put reform measures directly on the ballot.