Tax for County Fire Services Put on Ballot

County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman has exactly 90 days to convince Los Angeles voters that they should pony up $52 million for critically important fire services lost with the passage of local tax-slashing Proposition 218.

That is the assignment the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors handed him Tuesday when it unanimously voted to hold a special election June 3 seeking approval of a special assessment to maintain fire services.

The problem is, neither Freeman nor other county officials can use their on-the-job time, or the public’s money, to wage such a campaign because it is considered a “political” issue, they say.

And because Freeman’s job description technically dictates that he be on the job 24 hours a day, that doesn’t leave him much wiggle room, he says.

The fact that voters in the county’s unincorporated areas and 48 smaller cities must approve spending all that money by more than a two-thirds margin makes the task all but impossible, Freeman says. And, he adds, he and other county officials must get voters to the polls on an election day, June 3, on which almost nothing else is on the ballot.

That is usually the death knell for tax measures, political consultants said Tuesday.

But without the $52 million, which had been raised through a special fire assessment in each of the past five years, the Fire Department’s response to everything from wildfires to car collisions and heart attack victims could be gutted, placing lives and property at risk. Freeman says 300 firefighters could be laid off, and 20 of the county’s 100 or so fire stations shuttered.

So what to do?

“I cannot advocate for this,” Freeman stressed Tuesday. “So we’re not calling it a campaign. We’re calling it an election. We plan to keep it squeaky clean.”

As such, Freeman said, he is already consulting with county lawyers, well-versed in such issues, to make sure he doesn’t cross the line. What he can do, he says, is to try to make it clear that the proposal will actually lower firefighting fees from $54 to $40 a year.

Freeman’s remarks had some political experts scratching their heads and wondering what kind of legal advice he is being given. They say the fire chief is taking an ultraconservative role, which is about the opposite of what he needs to do to secure approval of such a ballot measure.

Arnold Steinberg, a political strategist who specializes in ballot measure campaigns, questioned Freeman’s contention that he can’t get involved.

“Why can’t he?” asked Steinberg. “I’m not a lawyer, but that certainly doesn’t sound like it would pass constitutional muster, for someone to be muzzled 24 hours a day, seven days a week. . . . Maybe he’s just looking for an out.”

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Public affairs consultant Richard Lichtenstein agreed, saying that then-Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates “certainly found time” to campaign against the police reform measure, Charter Amendment F. “And other public safety officials have done the same,” he said.

Lichtenstein said the county and Fire Department could conceivably create a political action committee, raise money and hold rallies and speeches to raise public awareness.

Indeed, the issue of where a political campaign ends and an information drive begins is a murky one, at best.

Gary Huckaby, a spokesman for the state Fair Political Practices Commission, said the watchdog agency has a prohibition on the use of public funds for candidates, but none for ballot measures.

As for whether Freeman and his staff can campaign for passage of the measure, Huckaby added: “We don’t have any purview over how public employees spend their time on the job.”

The FPPC did fine Sacramento County $10,000 last July for spending $35,000 in support of three ballot measures on bonds for public safety funds and other issues. But that fine was not for spending the money; it was for not reporting it to the FPPC, Huckaby said.

Whatever the case with Freeman, it is clear that the county’s powerful firefighters union and its thousands of rank-and-file members can--and will--do battle to win the hearts and minds of voters.

“Obviously, we plan to wage an aggressive campaign,” said union President Dallas Jones. “Our big concern, and polls indicate this, is that unless half the county burns down, [voters] are not going to believe this is a crisis. . . . We are not optimistic at all that this measure will be passed.”

Jones said the union already is mobilizing--enlisting civic leaders, community groups and everyone else it thinks can help get the word out. “The big problem we have is getting people to believe this isn’t some scheme to raise their taxes,” Jones said.

The decision to go before the voters was prompted by a potentially precedent-setting decision Monday, in which a Superior Court judge ruled that the Fire Department is not exempt from provisions of Proposition 218, the recently passed state initiative that gave voters the right to approve any “special purpose tax.”

By voting at their weekly board meeting to place the issue before voters, the supervisors agreed in principle to spend at least $2.5 million on election notifications and the other costs.

They also decided to give voters in 11 cities and the county’s unincorporated areas the option of paying $22 a year each for library services. When Proposition 218 was passed, about $9 million in library assessments were deemed unconstitutional.

“Maybe,” county Librarian Sandra Reuben suggested to the supervisors, “we can have a ‘books and ladders’ campaign.”