Zeanah Sues City Clerk to Have Recall Forms Voided

THOUSAND OAKS — Charging that petitions to recall her clearly violate state law, attorneys for Councilwoman Elois Zeanah filed a lawsuit Monday against City Clerk Nancy Dillon seeking to have the signatures thrown out as soon as they are submitted.

Frederic D. Woocher, a Santa Monica-based attorney who specializes in initiative and referendum law, said the signatures collected by the group Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah should be declared invalid because the forms they were collected on are illegal and potentially misleading.

Woocher said the format of the petitions should never have been certified by Dillon because the side of the documents voters are being asked to sign fails to list several critical pieces of information required by state elections law. They include:

* A copy of the notice to circulate the petition, and a list of reasons why Zeanah should be ousted.

* Zeanah’s full rebuttal.

* A request for the election of a successor to Zeanah.

* The names and addresses of at least 10 of the people who signed the initial papers to recall Zeanah.

* A declaration from each person who signs that they are registered to vote in Thousand Oaks.

Much of that information appears on the petitions--but on the wrong side of the page. Because of that, Zeanah and her lawyers contend many voters might not have understood what they were signing.

“I think it was purposeful misrepresentation,” Zeanah said. “I’m receiving calls every day about the fact that there’s no information on the signature page. A lot of people are being told it’s to SUPPORT me, not to recall me.”

Woocher is asking for a hearing on the suit, which was filed in Ventura County Superior Court, by the end of the week. He said he won a similar case last year involving a signature drive in the city of Hawaiian Gardens, and is confident that he will prevail again.

“It was, frankly, a much less egregious violation than this one,” Woocher said of the Hawaiian Gardens case. “I have never seen a petition this badly drafted. This is not even close.”

Dillon was unavailable for comment Monday. She has declined to discuss the validity of the petitions, saying that she submitted them to officials at the secretary of state’s office, the authority on the initiative process, before approving them.

Woocher asked Thousand Oaks officials last month to respond to his and Zeanah’s complaints that the signatures were being collected illegally. City Atty. Mark Sellers said he told Zeanah’s lawyer that Thousand Oaks will not take a position on the issue. He stressed that in his opinion, Dillon had done nothing wrong, and that it was strictly a dispute between Zeanah and the group trying to recall her.

“We’re caught in the middle of it,” Sellers said. “Whichever side we take on this, we would be stepping on some toes at this point. We think it’s for the two parties to decide in court, if that is what they think is right.”

Zeanah said she wanted Dillon to throw out the signatures instead of taking the issue to court, but was left with no recourse.

“It’s not something I liked having to do,” she said. “I wish the city clerk would have corrected this herself, but it was obvious that that was not going to happen.”

Peter J. Turpel, the spokesman for Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah, reiterated Monday that he and the signature-gatherers have done nothing improper, noting that Dillon approved their format.

“It’s not surprising,” Turpel said of the suit. “Mrs. Zeanah is once again attempting to use any means she can to stop the recall process, because I believe that even she is realizing that the people of Thousand Oaks are questioning whether she should be in office.

“We did our best to dot our i’s and cross our t’s,” he added. “We checked this out with all of the authorities involved. It would be nice if instead of attacking the system, Mrs. Zeanah worked with our city clerk and our city government.”

The anti-Zeanah group said in a news release last week that it had collected more than 10,000 signatures. It needs signatures from 10,357 residents, or 15% of Thousand Oaks’ 69,047 registered voters, to place the recall measure on the ballot.