Last week, I wrote about how the pro Wal-Mart majority of the Rosemead City Council used a liberal ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to undue the scheduled recall against two of the majority’s members. See it here.
Oops again. One member of that majority (of course she is the one not being recalled) changed her mind after the federal government said they wouldn’t punish the city for violating the law. So now the recall is on. See the article here.
Some words of caution for Rosemead voters. In the early 1990’s, I was involved in a successful recall of all five council members in Covina after they voted for a utility tax. Well, guess what? The tax is still there. I’m sure we can all think of examples of recall elections that didn’t work out as well as hoped.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:00 am
This story is misleading. The federal government didn’t say “they wouldn’t punish the city for violating the law.” The DOJ said that the consent decree that Rosemead must adhere to (http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/sec_203/documents/rosemead_cd.pdf)
was not intended to apply retroactively. The DOJ said the consent decree was a “forward looking” document intended to apply to future elections (i.e., activities undertaken after the consent decree was signed in September 2005).
Save Our Community followed all the rules that were in place when they started this recall effort back in April 2005. Changing the rules on them after the petitions had already been circulated, turned in, and verified makes a travesty of the electoral process. The DOJ recognized this and sent the city a letter staying that the consent decree did not require retroactive application of a multi-lingual petition rule that didn’t even exist until three months after the petitions were turned in (and that no longer exists at all, since the Ninth Circuit has decided to hold an en banc hearing of Padilla v. Lever).