Nancy Sciortino states in her recent letter to the editor (Letters, Emails and Website Comments: “Righting the Right,” April 4, 2014) that the [Signal Hill] city attorney used “false information” in drafting Measure U’s impartial analysis. She asserts “…the Court ordered that the analysis be revised.” For someone accusing the City [of Signal Hill] of using “false information” and attempting to “bias the voter,” it is unfortunate that Ms. Sciortino and others misrepresent what happened in court on March 27, 2014.
The Court did not issue a ruling. The Court did not determine that the City used false information. The Court did not rule that the City was attempting to “bias the voter.” These accusations are untrue.
Carol Churchill, representing the proponents of Measure U, had completely rewritten the city attorney’s analysis and asked the court to substitute her analysis for that of the city attorney. The Court wouldn’t do that. The Court did say that if he was going make a ruling, there were a few of the words the city attorney used which the Court might change. The Court encouraged the parties to see if they could agree on changes. The revisions were reported to the Court, who then took the matter “off calendar” without issuing a ruling on the merits. For those reasons, the statements by Ms. Sciortino and others are false.
We agreed to take modified language that said that disputes over Measure U could lead to litigation and that the legal costs were “speculative.” We agreed to take out “speculative.” However, the proponents have taken the City to court five times in the last month over interpretations of Measure U at a cost of $30,000. So, given recent history, does anyone think that our statement that Measure U will lead to unknown litigation costs is speculative or false or misleading? For the full text of the settlement agreement, see the City’s website, under “Measure U.”
If voters are happy with the state of their City and if they think the City Council has made good decisions on behalf of the citizens, they should be very leery of relying on the representations of folks who will walk right out of the courtroom and immediately “spin” the story without regard to truth.
David J. Aleshire
City attorney
City of Signal Hill
