Clerk Asks to Fix Rules (SB Sun 072406) Plan Targets Voting in SB

This is one huge battle that will consume the SB Council until the next election wait and see!!.

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Clerk asks to fix rules
Plan targets voting in SB

Kelly Rayburn, Staff Writer SB Sun

SAN BERNARDINO - Voters could be asked to amend the guidelines governing city elections this November after confusion arose over an anti-illegal-immigration initiative proposed earlier this year.

The City Council today will consider a proposal from City Clerk Rachel Clark that would place a question before voters to move the city's elections guidelines for initiatives, referendums and recalls closer to the guidelines used by the state.

Some question whether the changes are needed. Others say the timing is wrong.

"Do I agree with (the proposal)?" said 2nd Ward Councilman Dennis Baxter. "Yes, I agree with it. Do I think it's a good time to put it on the ballot? No, I don't."

Baxter said people are already faced with a full plate of choices on the November ballot.

"The voters are going to be totally overwhelmed in November," he said. "When voters get tired, they just go, 'No, no, no.' "

For Clark, the changes are overdue.

In a staff report, she said that two years ago her office studied 24 charter cities and found that 22 of them followed the state Elections Code provisions on the types of elections in question either entirely or partially.

San Bernardino has its own elections procedures, and Clark says the guidelines are ambiguous.

"Good governance is the bottom line," she said.

Clark's proposal comes weeks after Superior Court Judge A. Rex Victor ruled that Joseph Turner, a resident who collected thousands of signatures in favor of a broad anti-illegal-immigration ballot measure, had used the wrong mayoral election as a baseline in determining how many signatures he needed.

Turner began collecting signatures before the February mayoral runoff between Mayor Pat Morris and City Attorney James F. Penman but turned them in after.

He would have needed more signatures if he used the February election as a benchmark.

The ruling overturned Clark's determination that the signatures were enough to force a citywide vote.

Clark's current proposal would prescribe changes to parts of the elections process such as how long advocates have to circulate petitions, how long the City Clerk has to verify signatures, and what happens when insufficient signatures are submitted.

It would not ask voters to change the actual number of signatures required to force a vote. Neither would it adopt new language to clearly say which mayoral election should be used as a benchmark in a case such as Turner's.

Victor's ruling provides court precedent to prescribe the answer to that question, but Penman, who retained his city attorney post after losing the mayoral election, said the proposal does nothing to clear up the kind of situation that arose.

In fact, Penman defended Clark's position in court, but now says there never would have been a problem at all had Clark asked his office ahead of time whether the signatures were enough to force a vote. They weren't, Penman said, and it was clear to him how the court would rule.

Penman said it would be a waste of money to spend $50,000 to place a charter change before voters when there should be no confusion.

His office put together an alternative charter-change proposal that will also be weighed by the council today. It would include fewer elections-policy changes than Clark's.

But Penman said he is recommending that neither recommendation be placed on the ballot