In ongoing back-and-forth legal wrangling over three resident-sponsored ballot initiatives, an Orange County Superior Court again sided with the group seeking to give voters an opportunity to weigh in on the measures in the upcoming election.
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On Wednesday, Sept. 2, Judge Julianne Bancroft granted the Newport Beach Stewardship Association’s request that the measures giving voters a voice over processes for City Council meetings, term limits, and how the public selects council members in districts be put to a vote during the Nov. 3 election.
The judge ordered that Newport Beach take the “necessary steps” to hold an election in November on the three citizen-sponsored initiatives.
But city officials, who wanted the order for having the election on Nov. 3 removed, say the OC Registrar of Voters can’t accomodate the three measures on a ballot with the rest of the election, and having the city clerk administer a special election is a monumental and difficult undertaking. Also, city officials argue, election laws and the city charter require consolidation and don’t allow the city to hold a separate election on the same day as a statewide election.
Newport Beach City Clerk Lena Shumway, who is the city’s elections official, said in a filing with the court that being so close to the election makes it very difficult, given that specific deadlines to “properly administer” a public vote have passed.
“If the county, with all of these resources already in place, has determined that adding the three measures at this point would jeopardize the election process, the city will face insurmountable obstacles in attempting to establish and conduct an entirely separate election from the ground up,” she said, adding that the city has not held a separate election in 44 years.
“The city would therefore not simply be administering another election,” she said. “We would be required to establish an election operation from the ground up while simultaneously attempting to meet election deadlines that are already underway.”
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The cost of a standalone election would range from approximately $1 million to $1.2 million, she said.
Newport Beach City Attorney Aaron Harp has filed an appeal of Bancroft’s most recent order.
The city’s original appeal to the Court of Appeals was filed in late August after Bancroft first considered the city’s petition, which questioned the initiatives’ validity because they were published in the OC Reporter, a paper the city has said is not Newport Beach’s paper of record.
The Newport Beach Stewardship Association argues the city is stalling to prevent the initiatives from being placed on the ballot and is wasting taxpayer money.
An earlier initiative sponsored by the resident group dealing with housing will appear on the November ballot. The City Council had scheduled the three initiatives that followed for 2028, which Bancroft said last week was an “abuse of its discretion.”
But efforts to get the information to the Registrar of Voters in time for the ballot materials to be printed for the consolidated election were too late, according to Leon Panetta, the county’s counsel.
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