SLO County group won its recall fight but won't get a dime for legal fees. Why?
The effort to recover a total of $151,630 in legal fees came at the close of a clash between GroverH2O and the city over petitions to recall Councilmembers Zach Zimmerman and Dan Rushing and Mayor Karen Bright due to their votes to raise water and wastewater rates to pay for the since-discontinued Central Coast Blue water recycling project.
GroverH2O submitted a total of six versions of its recall petition to the city in early 2024, culminating in an April 26, 2024, lawsuit that alleged that the recall efforts were being blocked in bad faith by city clerk Wendy Sims and other city officials by unlawfully rejecting two lines in the petition.
Sims originally denied the petitions because the city took issue with two sentences it believed to be 'false, misleading and inconsistent with the requirements' of Chapter 1 of the Elections Code, according to the original lawsuit. Those statements were:
'Dan Rushing voted to make Grover Beach the industrial area of Pismo Beach and Arroyo Grande.'
'Dan Rushing approved a project to tear up newly repaired residential streets for 16 wells, a mile of pipelines, and a wastewater treatment plant in Grover neighborhoods.'
In May 2024, San Luis Obispo County Superior Court Judge Craig Van Rooyen ruled the city violated election law by denying the petitions submitted by GroverH2O on the basis of their content, which organizer and former mayor Debbie Peterson said at the time violated the group's First Amendment rights.
In a tentative ruling issued by the court, Van Rooyen directed the city to accept and allow the circulation of the original recall petition submitted in April 2024, including the lines in question.
Though the city initially appealed Van Rooyen's decision, it dropped the appeal in May.
The unaltered petition to recall Rushing was then released to GroverH2O by the city clerk on May 29, giving the petitioners until June 6 to collect a minimum of 504 valid signatures to get the recall on the November ballot.
GroverH2O's petition ultimately accomplished its goal of getting the recall on the November ballot, with 55.4% of votes cast on the recall calling for Rushing's removal.
However, the issue of attorney's fees was left unresolved until April 7, when Van Rooyen denied GroverH2O's bid.
During public comment at the March 24 City Council meeting, Peterson told the council that GroverH2O expected to see their fees repaid following their victory in court.
'We call on the City Council to respect the majority vote and mandate of the people of Grover Beach and the courts, and cut their — and the people's — losses,' Peterson said during public comment. 'Pay up now before the costs go higher.'
Under the Code of Civil Procedure, attorney's fees can be awarded to a successful party if their litigation enforced an important right affecting the public interest.
According to the ruling, petitioners argued that they 'conferred a significant benefit on the general public by enabling District 2 voters to participate in the selection (or in this case, the rejection) of their elected representative through the recall process in the November 2024 election.'
In return, the city argued that the issue of Rushing's recall was already turned over to voters when the city accepted and circulated a revised version of the petition without the contested language.
As such, the question at hand came down to whether obtaining a writ directing the city to certify the April 2024 petition containing the contested language conferred a significant benefit to the public, city attorney Rob Lomeli said.
'Ultimately, the court found that because the falsity of statements was never at issue, and because there was already another petition that was being circulated, there really was no benefit that had been conferred on the public, so they denied the fees to these petitioners,' Lomeli said.
Lomeli said had the petitioners been successful in their motion to recoup attorney fees, the funding would have come from the city's general fund.
While Van Rooyen's decision can be appealed, Lomeli said he hasn't heard anything from the petitioners about further legal action at this time.
The Tribune reached out to Peterson for comment but did not receive a reply as of Friday afternoon.
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