1 Recall Bid Advances as a 2nd Stumbles

A group hoping to recall Councilwoman Elois Zeanah has received city approval to begin a second signature-gathering campaign, while a rival group looking to oust Mayor Judy Lazar and Councilman Andy Fox was sent back to Square One because of a series of technical blunders.

Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah--which gathered more than 15,000 recall signatures earlier this year, only to have them thrown out by Superior Court Judge Joe Hadden for format violations--received the go-ahead from City Clerk Nancy Dillon to distribute new petitions. Dillon gave her approval late Wednesday after Hadden signed off on the group’s amended petition format.

The group has yet to decide how it will collect the signatures--whether it will canvass door to door, in front of supermarkets, or send petitions through the mail, group spokeswoman Barbara Sponsler said.

“We’re still meeting and trying to make a decision about what we’re going to do,” Sponsler said. “We kind of know what we want to do, but at this point, we don’t really want to disclose our strategy since the other side is so retaliatory.”

Meanwhile, Residents to Recall Fox and Lazar, a group formed to recall Zeanah’s council foes, was notified Wednesday that it needed to rework its petition to oust Fox--and start its Lazar recall from scratch.

In the case of the Fox recall, the group only needs to fix a few sentences in its petition. But to continue the Lazar recall, that group needs to serve Lazar with recall papers for a third time as well as publish another notice in a local newspaper before even submitting a new petition.

One person who signed the Lazar recall papers put down a wrong home address, and a published notice in the Thousand Oaks Star advertising the recall contained grossly inaccurate and misleading information, according to Dillon.

Due to a typographical error by a Star employee, the newspaper published a notice stating that Lazar voted for the “464,000,000” Civic Arts Plaza. The building’s construction actually cost $64 million.

“It was a typographical error,” said Jennifer Garcia, the clerk who typed the legal notice. “I tried my best to input that thing correct, but a mistake got in.”

“Mayor Lazar would take great offense to that, for one, and also, it was not in their original document, so it was inconsistent,” Dillon said.

Kitty Radler of Residents to Recall Fox and Lazar said the group will continue with the recalls despite the setback. The group is being advised by Raleigh H. Lavine, the Santa Monica attorney who represented Zeanah in her successful fight to have the other recall group’s signatures declared invalid.

“We could go to court on it, but it was quicker and easier to go to Square One,” Radler said. “There are two things here: the Star made a mistake, they said the Civic Arts Plaza cost $464 million, and one of the persons that signed originally made a mistake.”