The judge in the MROSD petition case has implied that the county elections commission was not impartial in its counting, and extended the deadline. San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Carl Holm will hear oral arguments in the case August 5. Apparently he must reach a decision by Aug. 6 to place a measure on the November ballot. Holm gave the lawyers until next Friday July 30 to file briefs on the case.
Neither the Mercury News, the San Mateo Times, nor the San Francisco Chronicle gives enough information to really understand this case, although the Merc has the most detail. I think this has become too arcane for baysiders to be interested. I’d like to hear more about this hearing from people who were there, but most will probably keep quiet while the case is up in the air.
MROSD’s opponents are taking two approaches, attempting to have some 650 invalidated petitions declared valid and trying to get the judge to order LAFCO to call for an election regardless of the outcome of the petition review.
The Mercury News reports that the judge expressed his concern that the county elections commission was not impartial, referring to county elections manager David Tom:
“I was led to believe Mr. Tom was trying to do things objectively’’ rather than helping the annexation cause, Holm said.
FOR OTHER VIEWS: See comments on this story for a pro-annexation account of the hearing. See comments on an earlier story, for an anti-annexation account.
I am curious about the headline. I did not hear that specific point made by Judge Holm. The case was delayed so the opposing attorney could submit written briefs.
Terry Gossett and Jeff Allen spent time on the witness stand claiming that observers of the protest petition counting process in favor of the MROSD district expansion had created their own records of protest signatories. However, Terry Gossett testified that he had kept a data base of all the signed petitions.
As a result of creating the data base It should have been no surprise to him that some individuals submitted multiple protests (sometimes up to five). Even he and his wife had each submitted two protest petitions. In fact, when asked why they had done so by Judge Holm Terry said he had no good reason.
In the two separate court hearings, that he also testified that he had added information to other peoples protest petitions prior to handing them over to LAFCo. He claimed he was clarifying the petitions for LAFCo.
Another point the papers missed was the testimony by Bob Braitman, hired by Oscar Braun as a witness, that his first (and ongoing) assignment by Save Our Bay is to put an application in to LAFCo for the creation of a new city in all the San Mateo County lands west of Skyline. Daniels, Brauns attorney, alleged that LAFCo has a bias against rural citizens, is slow to process applications and is using a double standard. Judge Holm politely suggested that Daniels move on and quite wasting the courts time.
At the end of a day and a half of testimony and argument the judge said he did not know what he was being asked to decide. He outlined the following 6 points to be briefed on:
What is the proper interpretation of Government Code 57051; what is sufficient to indentify a registered voter. Does this include the necessity for the signiture on the voter registration to match the one on the protest petition?
What is the role of the Court here? Can it order an election if the 25% threshold is not met?
Is it premature for the Court to act?
What is the role of the Court in assessing the re-evaluation of the insufficient protest petitions by the elections office. Can the Court order LAFCo to add these new numbers?
Was it an error for elections to use Goverment Code 56704 to “knock out” protsts?
Which of the disqualified protest petiions should be re-considered and if qualified added to the quaified petitions. This argument must be based on the record, testimony and law; it must look at categories of insufficiencies and not on individual protest petitions.
Additionally, Mr. Daniels was given the choice of providing a briefing on the admissibility of a previous transcript as evidence.
Both sides were instructed to write a proposed judgement and order of decision. Daniels was required to write the proposed ballot arguments in case the decision is to put this on the ballot in November.