Former Planning Commissioner says council member is afraid to debate Measure U.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
Malibu residents might have seen the final debate on Measure U, the proposal to extend the limitation on City Council terms from two four-year terms to three, on Saturday at the Malibu Township Council forum. Former Planning Commissioner Richard Carrigan, the leading opponent of the measure, said he tried to arrange a second debate, but he said Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich, who proposed Measure U, has been uncooperative in arranging one.
Carrigan said he wanted to schedule a second Measure U debate on March 29 that would take place either before or after the scheduled Point Dume Community Association council candidate forum. As of Tuesday afternoon, he had not heard from the community association whether it would allow the debate to take place. But even if it were approved, Conley Ulich has declined to participate because she said there was no purpose in doing so.
“I think that people can understand that the proposal is to extend the term limits from two four-year terms to three four-year terms,” Conley Ulich said. “I don’t know why I would have to explain what that means in a debate.
“I’m not a candidate and it’s a candidate’s forum,” she continued. “It sounds like Richard wants to be a candidate.”
Carrigan said he believed the real reason why Conley Ulich did not want to debate the issue is because she knows she has no argument for why the council members did not draft the language for Measure U so that it did not apply to them.
“Absolutely I do,” said Carrigan when asked if Conley Ulich was afraid to debate him. “I can’t believe she doesn’t have five minutes to debate this.”
Conley Ulich said she planned from the beginning not to conduct a campaign for Measure U. She has so far limited her campaigning to ballot measure arguments and the launching of a Web site. However, she did say in an interview that she believed Carrigan was a hypocrite because he supported Walt Keller’s candidacy in 2004, which would have elected him to his third term had he won. The city’s term limits law did not apply to Keller because his previous terms were served before it went into effect.
Carrigan said in response to Conley Ulich’s statement that he supported Keller because he was on the ballot. Had a term limits measure been proposed in the early ’90s that would have affected Keller, Carrigan said he would have supported it.
Conley Ulich suggested Carrigan contact other council members if he insists on needing a debate. Carrigan said he would contact Councilmember Jeff Jennings and Mayor Pro Tem Ken Kearsley.
The debate on Saturday was arranged at the last moment as an attachment to the scheduled candidate forum and took place between Carrigan and Council member Jeff Jennings.
Jennings said he was philosophically opposed to term limits in a small city, where he said the power of incumbency was not strong. He pointed to the fact that in Malibu’s history, 15 incumbents have run for office, and six of them have lost.
“We have term limits, every four years you get to vote people in or out,” Jennings said.
Carrigan voiced his theory that Measure U was an attempt at a power grab by the current council. When Jennings failed to address the issue of why the council members did not frame the proposal so that it does not apply to them, Carrigan said he was disappointed that Jennings would not even discuss it. He further stated that he believed there was a tremendous advantage for incumbents.
“In a small city like Malibu, the power of incumbency in enormous,” Carrigan said. “Incumbents have visibility. They have media attention. They have a proven network of fundraising.”
The candidate forum that preceded the Measure U debate was a mostly agreeable affair because the two incumbents did not attend the event. Mayor Andy Stern and Councilmember Sharon Barovsky said last week that they would not be going to the forum because they were not notified about it until after another candidate event had been scheduled for them.
An e-mail had been sent to all the candidates on Feb. 21, but Barovsky and Stern said they did not receive it. Barovsky said all e-mails sent to her private address go straight to her spam folder if it comes from a person not in her address book. The incumbents added that somebody should have phoned them from the MTC after they did not respond to the e-mails.
At Saturday’s forum, John Mazza and Ryan Embree said they were disappointed the incumbents were not there.
“I find it absolutely outrageous that two of our incumbent council members would prefer to go to a coffee [private candidate’s informational event] rather than this forum.” Embree said.
Mazza added, “I’m sorry that the incumbents made a conscious decision to ignore this forum. But there’s an old saying that you can run, but you can’t hide.”
The Point Dume forum will take place at 7 p.m. at Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School, located at 6955 Fernhill Dr. Pete Anthony from the association could not be reached for comment on whether a debate on Measure U will be included at the event.