The city of San Diego has filed a lawsuit calling on the regional Local Agency Formation Commission — which provides guidance to communities seeking to become cities — to rescind a ruling that would allow the cityhood effort in La Jolla to move forward.
The suit, dated June 19 and filed in Superior Court in San Diego by City Attorney Heather Ferbert, seeks to stop LAFCO and its executive officer, Keene Simonds, from proceeding with the cityhood process, which includes launching an administrative review of the application filed by the Association for the City of La Jolla.
The dispute centers on LAFCO’s actions during the process of verifying petition signatures that ultimately reversed the San Diego County registrar of voters office’s initial determination that the association’s petition drive had failed to gather enough valid signatures to continue the cityhood effort. On April 29, LAFCO issued a “certificate of sufficiency” indicating that ACLJ had gathered the required signatures.
“The city brings this action as a result of [Simonds’] improper and legally unjustified determination that the Association for the City of La Jolla’s petition for the proposed special reorganization for the incorporation of the city of La Jolla … contained the required number of valid signatures to initiate incorporation proceedings, as represented by the certificate of sufficiency,” the suit states.
It also declares that LAFCO “and all parties pursuant to their direction and control violated the law by issuing the certificate of sufficiency.”
It goes on to ask the court to “issue preliminary and permanent injunctions ordering LAFCO and [Simonds] … to rescind the certificate of sufficiency” and issue a certificate of insufficiency indicating that the petition “was not signed by the requisite number of signers and enjoining LAFCO from continuing the proceedings.”
Should a certificate of insufficiency be issued, ACLJ would have to restart the petition process.
Soon after the lawsuit was filed, the Association for the City of La Jolla’s legal counsel, Best Best & Krieger, wrote a letter to Simonds calling the suit “meritless” and said the city relied on incorrect information in its calculation of how many signatures were required.
Citing a section of government code, ACLJ said the number of signatures needed was 6,549, not the 6,772 the city was using.
“While this may seem like a small difference, it is incredibly significant because there can be no dispute this smaller number was met,” the letter states.
Last year, ACLJ set out in a six-month effort to gather signatures from 25% of La Jolla’s registered voters, or 6,536, in support of the separation initiative. The petition drive was a required step to keep the cityhood application process going.
In mid-December, the group submitted nearly 8,000 signatures to the registrar of voters office and LAFCO for review and validation.
However, the registrar of voters office said in March that the group fell 1,027 short of the number required because of signatures determined to be invalid or in need of information such as a date or an address.
LAFCO gave the association from March 17 to April 1 to correct the invalid signatures, collect new ones or both to fill the gap. The group came up with 1,506.
In late April, the association received a letter saying it had collected a total of 6,772 valid signatures, putting it over the threshold.
Soon after, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria issued a formal objection that argued LAFCO overstepped in the process of verifying the signatures, and he disputed many of the signatures that ultimately were deemed valid.
The city’s objection said “the [registrar of voters] reviewed both the petition and supplemental petition [the second round of signature-gathering] and found them insufficient, with a shortfall of 218 valid signatures.”
The city stated that ACLJ “requested to review the rejected signatures and contest those they believe the [registrar of voters] improperly rejected.”
LAFCO conducted a secondary review of the contested signatures on the supplemental petition and ultimately “overruled the [registrar’s] rejection on 239 signatures,” the city said.
Of the 239 “resurrected” signatures, the city said it was “allowed to review 212.” The city contended that of those, only 33 were valid, and it objected to the remaining 179.
The city also said it “objects to LAFCO’s secondary review of the signatures [ACLJ] contested” and believes the registrar of voters should be the authority on whether signatures are valid.
On May 2, LAFCO issued a formal response to San Diego’s objection, calling many of the city’s claims “inaccurate” and saying it was moving forward with the cityhood application process.
Ten days later, the San Diego City Council decided on a 6-0 vote during a closed session to authorize legal action over LAFCO’s handling of the petition signatures.
“From the outset, I’ve made it clear that the city of San Diego has serious concerns about LAFCO’s exceptionally broad and questionable interpretations that led them to overturn the county registrar of voters’ official determination that the La Jolla secession petition was insufficient,” Gloria said at the time.
“The decision by LAFCO to overrule the registrar undermines public confidence in the integrity of this signature-verification process and sets a troubling precedent. This litigation aims to provide San Diegans with the transparency they deserve, hold LAFCO accountable for its arbitrary and capricious decisions and affirm the registrar’s original certification of insufficiency.”
However, the ACLJ letter maintains that “unequivocally … the petition had the required number of signatures using only those signatures over which there is no dispute. Therefore, there is no factual basis for the city lawsuit’s claim that ACLJ did not gather the required valid signatures.”
“We request [that Simonds ] issue an amended certificate of sufficiency stating that 6,549 was the minimum signature requirement for a sufficient petition and mail a copy of the amended certificate of sufficiency to ACLJ,” the letter states. ♦