Foe to withdraw lawsuit if Prop. R wins

A national advocacy group said Thursday that it would drop its legal challenge to a ballot measure to relax term limits for the Los Angeles City Council if voters approved Proposition R on election day.

Paul Jacob, president of U.S. Term Limits, said that a lawsuit would not be pursued out of respect for voters, even though his group still opposes the measure.

“We do not want to ever be in the position to strike down the vote of the people,” Jacob said at a news conference outside City Hall. “So if Prop. R does pass -- if the people are tricked fair and square by the tricksters -- we will not continue to sue.”

However, Jacob said that if the measure were to lose he would pursue the court case to try to secure a legal precedent against similar ballot measures elsewhere.

His announcement was the latest wrinkle in the months-long saga that has become Proposition R, which would allow council members to serve three terms instead of the two now permitted.

Backers say term limits sometimes discourage elected officials from tackling difficult problems because they know that they might have to leave before solutions can be put in place. The current limits sometimes lead them to worry more about charting a political path to higher office.

But the primary reason opponents seized on Proposition R was because backers tried to sweeten its voter appeal by adding provisions that would impose several new restrictions on City Hall lobbyists.

The suit to block it was filed by Los Angeles resident Neal Donner, with backing from U.S. Term Limits. It alleges that Proposition R violated the state Constitution’s single-subject rule, which forbids asking voters to cast a single vote on unrelated subjects -- in this case, term limits and lobbying rules.

In September, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien agreed and struck the measure from the ballot. The city, at the urging of the council, appealed and a court reinstated the measure and scheduled a hearing on Nov. 28 -- should Proposition R pass.

Within minutes of Jacob’s announcement about the lawsuit, another person in attendance -- Dave Hernandez, a board member of the North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council -- announced that he intended to sue if Proposition R were to win Tuesday. Hernandez is best known for his support of keeping the religious cross on the Los Angeles County seal.

Proposition R needs a simple majority to pass.

Also appearing at the news conference were several neighborhood council members who are running a grass-roots campaign against the measure.

They allege that the measure’s authors -- the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles -- have coordinated with the council to run a campaign based on inaccurate information.

Jason Lyon, a member of the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council, held up a campaign mailer by proponents and asked, rhetorically, “Do you want to go through it lie by lie?” He then pointed to a small statement inside the mailer that reads “Prop. R will establish a limit of three terms for City Council members.” Lyons said that statement makes it sound as if council members would get less time in office, not more.

Opponents of the measure have raised $3,155 compared to the $616,183 raised by proponents, which includes many firms that have business before the council. Among the late donors disclosed in the past week is Home Depot, which gave $25,000. The company is trying to build a store in the Sunland-Tujunga area -- in Council Pro Tem Wendy Greuel’s district -- and needs support from city officials.

Steven Weston, the lobbyist for Home Depot, said he was soliciting funds for the ballot measure because he dislikes term limits.

“I don’t think that term limits have been effective and we don’t give our elected officials long enough to deal with infrastructure problems and other long-term issues,” Weston said. “I know that” the measure “comes mixed up with a lot of so-called lobbying reforms and unfortunately it’s kind of the bad and the good, but I decided that the term limits were more important.”

In an interview in her City Hall office, Councilwoman Jan Perry also defended the ballot measure campaign. She said she believed that criticism over the campaign “misses the whole point and it makes me very sad because I think about the community I represent” -- downtown and parts of South Los Angeles -- “and what we’re trying to do there.”

Perry said she feared that many parts of Los Angeles, particularly minority communities, would get less attention if term limits forced too many council members from office in the next few years.

“These are areas that are already playing catch-up and there is a need for expertise and continuity to overcome what’s happened there the last 20 or 30 years.”

steve.hymon@latimes.com