the town dandy / By Hank Sims

The T Bill

(Sept. 25, 2008)  Boom! Early Tuesday morning there was a blast heard ‘round the Humboldt County Courthouse, that drab epicenter of local political life. The shock waves reverberated along the invisible tendrils that extend from the belly of the octopus, reaching into the homes and headquarters of various players and factions about the county. Measure T had been killed! Or just about! A federal judge had done the deed the night previous! The news inspired despondency in some, joyous I-told-you-so cackling in others.

Measure T was the anti-corporate citizen’s initiative that Humboldt County voters passed by a pretty healthy margin (55-45) in June 2006. It banned most corporations — “non-local” ones, inclusively defined — from donating to Humboldt County political campaigns. There were plenty of questions about its constitutionality at the time, but backers assured the electorate that: a) it would most likely pass legal muster, and b) that slavery was once constitutionally okie dokie too, but brave people came along to challenge that.

So comes the Pacific Legal Foundation, the spunky conservative outfit out of Sacramento, sensing low-hanging fruit. Last month they filed suit against the county, seeking to have T overturned. And on Monday, the court obliged the foundation with an injunction, which bans the county from enforcing the initiative for the time being, and indicates a strong likelihood of T’s defeat at trial. Judge Susan Illston deemed T to be strongly dubious on both First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds. (Get a copy on the North Coast Journal Blogthing — ncjournal.wordpress.com.)

Both Pacific Legal and the measure’s proponents — Democracy Unlimited, or Humboldt County Coalition for Human Rights — issued press releases. Pacific Legal’s was full of swagger, with attorney Damien Schiffcalling the ruling “a victory for fundamental constitutional rights.” Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, speaking for the proponents, was a bit more morose. She insisted that the court had erred, and again compared the cause to the anti-slavery and suffragette movements.

As it happened, the news came right as the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors was about to convene its regular meeting. It is county government, of course, that must defend Measure T, and that raises a question to which no one seems to have an answer: How far must it go? No one would imagine that the county could simply jettison the will of the voters. But nor would it seem practical that the county should be honor-bound to fight the thing all the way up to the Supreme Court, at untold cost and expense.

Reached Tuesday afternoon, Supervisor Jill Geist said that the board discussed the case in closed session that day. Since the session was closed, she could not disclose what was discussed. But her description of what generally happens during such sessions with legal counsel would seem to indicate that the county keeps its eye open for the exit sign. Generally speaking.

“When we go into closed session, we examine the risks and benefits of the various legal alternatives available to us, with an eye on what the fiscal impact could be,” Geist said.

^^^^^

1 2 NEXT PAGE >SHARE