This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Temecula Denies The People's Place in Democracy

The City of Temecula violates the Brown Act as they manipulate the process of public participation to avoid letting citizens vote on term limits.

If you have ever wondered what a Brown Act violation looks like, you can click on the link to the online video of Public Comments and Council Comments of the June 26 Temecula City Council meeting.

The four out of five council members present used the bully pulpit dais for a cumulative total of 12 minutes to rebuke public comments in the non-agendized “discussion” – as Councilman Jeff Comerchero called it – of a term limits ballot petition.

The Brown Act exists to discourage political bodies from having non-agendized discussions.

Find out what's happening in Temeculawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Eleven speakers, including myself, urged the City Council to put term limits on the ballot after a petition signed by 5,531 people failed to qualify for the ballot by 281 signatures based on a random sampling method used by the Registrar of Voters to verify the signatures.

According to a June 23 article in the Press-Enterprise, it would have cost the City $2,765 to have all of the signatures verified by the Registrar. Temecula shortchanged democracy by paying a measly $630 to check only ten percent of the signatures.

Find out what's happening in Temeculawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The random sampling method fell slightly below the threshold to trigger an automatic 100 percent verification. A complete verification would have determined if there were enough qualified signatures to put term limits on the November ballot or not. Five thousand disenfranchised petition signers were denied the due process of having their signatures verified by the Registrar of Voters for the sake of saving $2,135.

Temecula does democracy on the cheap.

Because of this shortcut, the Council now has a duty to put the matter to rest by placing it on the ballot, but so far refuses to even “discuss” the matter in a properly agendized public hearing.

The Temecula City Council plays by house rules and always has the last word. Maybe that is why thousands of people signed petitions to put term limits on the ballot.

Imagine if there had been more than just a handful of volunteers gathering signatures.

The count of qualified signatures was close enough that the city should have taken the high road and ponied up $2,765 for the citizens who signed those petitions in good faith. Instead, the council looks to be gaming citizens out of their rightful role in this government of the people.

The California Constitution of 1880 is clear. “All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require.”

A small group of citizens spent countless hours gathering signatures believing in those words. After their hard work and dubious defeat, they asked the City Council put the term limits issue on the agenda. The City Council ignored that request even after the City acted against the public good in deciding not to have all the signatures verified by the Registrar of Voters.

Placing the petition issue on a City Council agenda would have permitted City officials to engage in a public discussion without violating the Ralph M. Brown Act.

The Brown Act serves to protect the people’s right to participate in their government. Items to be considered by a body of government in California must be placed on an agenda in advance so the people can be informed and participate in the process. Elected officials have narrow leeway to discuss items not on the agenda. The public has freedom of speech. All political power is inherent in the people.

The First Amendment Coalition is an online resource that offers the following Q&A.

Q: What kind of leeway does the (Brown) Act allow a body’s members to bring up non-agendized matters?

A: On the one hand, members of the body may provide brief informational reports on their own personal activities, make announcements, and interact with public speakers and staff for informational or procedural purposes, including the addition of an item to a future agenda. On the other hand, they may not indulge in policy discussions or take substantive action of any kind on a non-agendized item without making certain findings by a specified vote. (Emphasis added)

Council members went beyond brief informational or procedural purposes by arguing against the non-agendized issue of term limits and defending the partial petition verification process. The Council ignored the City’s culpability in reportedly providing conflicting information concerning the petition, and instead deflected that issue by having the City Attorney state that the Registrar of Voters office fulfilled its duties – to the extent of the City’s minimalist signature sampling request.

An April 6, 2012 article in the Valley News reported, “The process to count and verify up to 4,196 signatures could have cost Temecula nearly $21,000, city officials said. County election officials were hired to count and verify the signatures. County officials used a complex statistical formula to determine whether Lynes’ group submitted enough signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot, (City Clerk Susan) Jones said.” (Emphasis added)

Anybody who has met her knows City Clerk Susan Jones to be as trustworthy as the day is long, and one of the nicest people you will ever meet on this planet. If there was miscommunication or misinformation, nobody doubts that it was unintentional. The cost of verifying all the signatures was apparently hugely inflated in April and the statistical formula used to check 500 of 5,500 signatures was described as “complex” in the April 6 news article.

It is possible that Ms. Jones opted for the sampling believing a full validation of the petition signatures would be cost prohibitive at the amount of $20,000 instead of $2,765.

Enough anomalies exist that the Temecula City Council is obligated to remove all shadows of doubt and restore public confidence by placing the term limits proposal on the November ballot.

I have mixed feelings about term limits, but for or against, I trust Temecula voters to decide the issue for our community by the ballot.

Voters put their trust in our elected officials. It is only reasonable for upstanding elected officials to put their trust in the community they serve.

Put it on the ballot.

If the City Council is afraid to do the right thing this election cycle, the next petition circulating around Temecula could well be for a total recall.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?