Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee files suit to revive petition

11 a.m., Monday, September 25, 2006:

The Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee announces that this morning attorney Stuart Flashman filed a new lawsuit in the long-running Oak to Ninth development controversy. The suit challenges Oakland City Attorney John Russo's September 6 invalidation of the 25,068-signature petition to place the development agreement before the voters.

The complaint, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, asserts that the Referendum Committee “and all those whose valid signatures are contained on the petitions, as well as the voters of the City of Oakland, will have been denied their right of referendum as guaranteed in the California Constitution.”

If the petition is reinstated, and there are enough valid signatures, it would force a public vote on the 64-acre development project which proposes to build 3,100 residential units on currently industrial land between Freeway 880, the Oakland Estuary waterfront, and east of the Jack London district. The proposed project also alters the adopted Estuary Policy Plan, in which parks, open space, and waterfront-related commercial uses originally predominated over residential development. 

The developers' attorneys claimed that the version of the agreement attached to the petition did not match the "final" one. However, the Referendum Committee declares that they used the official document, provided by Oakland City Clerk, LaTonda Simmons, on July 21, 3 days after final adoption by the City Council. Committee member James Vann says, "We used exactly what the Council adopted on July 18. If the agreement was substantially revised after the Council's vote, then something fishy is going on and City Attorney Russo will have to explain it."

“After mounting an enormous and successful effort to alert the public and collect signatures, the Referendum Committee faces an impossible situation,” said Helen Hutchison, President of the League of Women Voters of Oakland.  “The City gave us the authorized documents, several days into the brief 30-day signature gathering period.  Then when we turned in the signatures, they said, ‘we supplied the wrong documents so the referendum petition is invalid.’  Invalidating our petition for this reason completely undermines the right to petition for referendum on a city action.”

Two other lawsuits challenging the development were filed on July 21 on environmental grounds: one by Attorney Brian Gaffney for Joyce Roy and the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM), and the other by Arthur Levy for Oakland Heritage Alliance. On September 18, Attorney Gaffney added a new cause of action to the earlier complaint, citing procedural errors that, under the Oakland Charter, void the City Council's approvals for the development.

In the meantime, members of the Referendum Committee (<http://www.abetteroaktoninth.org/>http://www.abetteroaktoninth.org), who had planned to wind up their efforts, find themselves back in fundraising mode, collecting money to defend their petition against what they charge as “an unjustified invalidation” by City Attorney John Russo.