Thread: Escondido - Council members say immigration fight not over

Skip has been doing a great job of posting updates on Escondido but I do not believe he posted this one. If he has, please let me know.
I'm still amazed that any area of Mexifornia has tried to do something to try and uphold our immigration laws.
Btw, there are so many comments left I will not post them here but if you click on the link you can read them. Add your own comments too if you want, we need all the help we can get in this state. Last I checked we still are part of the U. S.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12 ... _14_06.txt

Friday, December 15, 2006
Last modified Thursday, December 14, 2006 9:30 PM PST

Council members say immigration fight not over

By: QUINN EASTMAN - Staff Writer

ESCONDIDO ---- We're not ending our fight against illegal immigration and its effects on Escondido, several City Council members said Thursday.

The council decided Wednesday night to stop efforts to defend in court its controversial ordinance punishing landlords for renting to illegal immigrants, citing rapidly rising legal bills and uncertainty over whether the ordinance could ever be enforced in cooperation with the federal government.

"This is one glitch in the battle, not a defeat," said Councilwoman Marie Waldron, who originally proposed the rental ordinance. "I intend to make the ordinance stronger and more defensible."

The council's action Wednesday was taken in closed session without a formal vote, council members and City Attorney Jeffrey Epp said.

"They don't usually use formal parliamentary procedure," Epp said. "It's more a discussion aimed at achieving some kind of consensus. Sometimes a council member makes it clear that he or she doesn't agree, but says 'I won't stand in your way.' "

Discussions with council members make it evident that if a formal vote had been taken Wednesday, the tally would have been 4-1, with Waldron voting against.

The council's apparent practice of taking action in closed session without a formal vote may technically violate the Brown Act, the state law governing public meetings, experts on the law said.

Often, city councils are briefed on lawsuits, land deals and personnel issues behind closed doors. The Brown Act allows them to do this, but it requires them to report the votes on actions they take afterward.

"If the Brown Act does anything, it forces elected officials to go on the record with their decisions," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition. "If they're going to authorize their lawyer to settle a high-profile lawsuit and pay the plaintiff's legal bills, that's an action by the council and they have to take a vote."

Advantage to decision cited

Waldron was re-elected in November after discussion of the ordinance played a prominent role in the election season.

She said she didn't support the action the council took Wednesday, but that she understood the reasoning of her colleagues.

She said one advantage of the council's action, from her point of view, was that it may avoid having federal Judge John Houston issue a permanent, precedent-setting ruling against the city's ordinance. Houston issued a temporary restraining order against the ordinance in November after the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups filed a lawsuit.

Several local governments across the country have passed similar ordinances and pioneer Hazleton, Pa., is also being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union.

As the ordinance was written, the city would have had to rely on the federal government to check tenants' immigration status, but it was unclear whether the city could legally get access to the information it needed.

Law enforcement and state agencies can check the immigration status of individuals through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, a computer program run by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But cities and private employers don't have access, partially because of federal officials' concerns about privacy.

Waldron held out the possibility that federal legislation could clear the way for cities to have access to the program. She said she would push sympathetic members of Congress for such legislation, as well as continuing to work on local ways to combat residential overcrowding.

'Stop the meter'

Although Waldron's colleagues apparently disagreed with her on the urgency of the need to limit the city's legal bills, they had similar ideas about how to focus the city's efforts in the future.

"What we did, basically, was stop the meter from running," said Councilman Ed Gallo, who voted for the ordinance in October.

With the city facing rapidly increasing legal bills, the council was obligated to take action "for the sake of the taxpayers," he said.

City officials said that lawyers working for the city told them that their current bills come to between $100,000 and $150,000. That does not include an agreement to pay the plaintiff coalition's bill up to $90,000, an amount both sides described as a deep discount.

The city still has to decide what to do with the relatively meager contributions to the city's legal defense fund, which total $355. The contributions could be easily refunded, according to the city manager's office.

With months of work ahead and possible appeals, the bill could have reached $1 million, Gallo said.

He agreed with Waldron that a rental ban ordinance might be crafted to pass legal muster in the future, and that other ways to address residential overcrowding would be necessary.

"We haven't given up," he said.

He also cited a recent proposal by Escondido police Chief Jim Maher, which is still under discussion, to authorize the Police Department to check the immigration status of documented gang members.

"We're going to take time out and move on," said Councilman Sam Abed, who also voted for the ordinance in October. He said he wanted the city to step up enforcement efforts against illegal conversion of garages to bedrooms.

He said he'd met several times with Congressman Brian Bilbray, R-Escondido, who made his opposition to illegal immigration a strong part of his election campaign, to discuss how to achieve more local government access to federal immigration databases.

Dick Daniels, who joined the council in November, said that the odds facing the city were too staggering.

"I supported the ordinance when it was enacted," he said, "But it became clear to me that we weren't going to get anything accomplished besides racking up additional legal costs."

Mayor Lori Pfeiler, the only current member of the council who voted against the ordinance in October, was low-key in her evaluation of her colleagues' decision.

"I just think they figured out (the rental ordinance) wasn't going to do what they wanted it to do," she said.

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http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12 ... _14_06.txt

Skip wrote on December 15, 2006 6:09 PM:"If Waldron only "did it" to get re-elected, doesn't that mean it is what the people want. Duh She wants to help the city and if that means being tough on Illegal Aliens so be it. Nobody was forced to vote for her, and the Illegal Aliens cannot vote. That is called Democracy in America."

Why Beat up on the ACLU wrote on December 15, 2006 6:23 PM:"Why blame the ACLU for the result that every legal expert (except the city attorney) predicted. It is easy to go after a group that protects the rights of the lesser members of our society. We are a nation of laws, the most important rights to protect are those that are contrary to the majority. Stop all the hate and how about a little empathy for the immigrants. Just think about what postition Jesus would take, or are all you haters atheist??????"

Skip wrote on December 15, 2006 8:46 PM:"These people are not the "Lesser Members" of our society. In fact they are not really members at all. That is why they are Illegal Aliens and have no right to be here in this country. Until our laws are changed, that is the way it is. And they are not immigrants either."

Skip wrote on December 15, 2006 8:47 PM:"Jesus does not make the laws in the United States."

I told you wrote on December 15, 2006 9:02 PM:"I, told you from the bigining, these guys just used the ordenance in order to be reelected too bad they made you dreem about it and that they had the wasted too much money on it, so wake up to the real life Escondido.and learn some thing no one can make any local law ordenances that brake federal law (constitution)"

To Skip wrote on December 15, 2006 9:28 PM:"They are foreign aggressors. The term illegal aliens fails to adequately describe the emerging mindset and objectivces of these people