‘No Communist’ Vote Is Delayed

The Westminster City Council on Wednesday delayed a widely anticipated vote to declare the city a “no-communist zone” after the mayor complained that she didn’t see the resolution until one hour before the meeting.

“I’m sorry,” Mayor Margie L. Rice told the crowd of mostly Vietnamese residents holding placards in support for the resolution, “but there’s no way of digesting this. I do not support communists -- I hate the communist way of life -- but I cannot vote on this tonight because I don’t know all that’s in it.”

Councilman Andy Quach, who co-authored the resolution with Councilman Kermit Marsh, said they had been hammering out revisions until 6 p.m.

“It surprised me,” he said later of the decision to delay voting until May 19. “In the past I’ve introduced resolutions and had them voted [on] on the spot. I think this one is timely, proportional and meets constitutional muster.”

Rice said she had been out of town and hadn’t seen the resolution, which prompted widespread media coverage because of potential 1st Amendment issues.

Among other things, the resolution would state that Westminster “does not condone, welcome or sanction stops, drive-bys or visits” by representatives of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, from which many of the city’s residents fled more than three decades ago. It would also discourage city employees and officials from “encouraging” such visits and request the U.S. State Department give at least 10 days’ notice.

A similar resolution is scheduled for consideration Tuesday in Garden Grove, which also has a large Vietnamese population.

The two resolutions were launched after the State Department gave Garden Grove two days’ notice that a delegation of Vietnamese officials on a “good will” trip would tour Little Saigon -- which straddles Westminster and Garden Grove -- on April 24. The tour was canceled when police said they couldn’t ensure the delegates’ safety.

Last year, both cities adopted laws declaring that the flag of the former nation of South Vietnam -- which the communist republic replaced after the Vietnam War -- would be flown during city-sponsored events.

And in 1999, Vietnamese community members demonstrated for 53 days after a Westminster video shop owner hung a picture of communist leader Ho Chi Minh and the communist flag. At one point the demonstration attracted about 15,000 protesters.

Quach and Marsh’s resolution has raised legal questions. “Vietnam is not a nice society,” Zachary Abuza, a Simmons College professor in Boston who studies Southeast Asian politics, has said. “But the community needs to understand they are operating in a new social, legal and political environment. There’s nothing we can do to stop the representatives of the communist government from traveling here.”

However, professor John Eastman, a constitutional law expert at Chapman University, said Wednesday he saw no immediate legal problems in the Westminster resolution.

“There are issues when cities actually try to conduct foreign policy,” he said, “and that oversteps the bounds. But if they’re just passing a nonbinding resolution expressing their concern about delegations, they have no less a right to do that than any other citizen.”