TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2002
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Volume 1, Issue 67
Santa Monica Daily Press Serving Santa Monica for the past 79 days
Brown Act lawsuit may be hard to prove
Red means stop!
Attorney says law may not support action BY CAROLYN SACKARIASON Daily Press Staff Writer
Carolyn Sackariason/Daily Press
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit looking to shorten the Santa Monica City Council’s meetings may have a hard time proving they don’t have fair access. By simply arguing that city council meetings run after midnight, the group planning to sue the city for violating the Brown Act may not have enough of a case, said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association. The Brown Act requires governing bodies to make public meetings reasonably accessible to citizens. “I’m not aware of any case law that supports that argument,” Ewert
A four-car accident Monday afternoon at Wilshire Boulevard and Sixth Street sent one man to the hospital with arm and neck injuries. According to eyewitnesses, the driver of the SUV, right foreground, ran a red light while traveling west on Wilshire. That SUV hit a car attempting a right turn onto Wilshire, causing it to slide into the eastbound lane where it was stopped by two vehicles approaching the intersection. “He came barreling through the light,” said Francine Harris, who was waiting at the light to make a left hand turn onto Sixth Street from Wilshire. “It was totally red. He passed me at BY ANDREW H. FIXMER the light.” Special to the Daily Press None of the drivers have been identified and the condition of the driver who was hit was Santa Monica shoppers can give unknown. their spare coins to a homeless pan-
said. “If they are making the meetings accessible, no matter what time of the day it is, they’ve done nothing wrong ... They can go 24 hours straight if they want to.” Local attorney Rosario Perry told the Daily Press that he is enlisting a group of plaintiffs to force the council to wrap up it’s business before midnight. The suit will ask a judge to prohibit the council from going beyond 11 p.m. Perry and a potential plaintiff, Santa Monica City Councilman Bob Holbrook, say that people can’t participate in the meetings because they can run as late as 3 a.m. Holbrook claims city officials deliberately overload meeting agendas so the public can’t be part of the process. If nothing else, the long meetings violate the spirit of the law, he said. See LAWSUIT, page 3
Dolphin statues: safe way to help homeless
Enron stock plummet costs state funds quarter-billion BY MICHAEL LIEDTKE AP Business Writer
SAN FRANCISCO — After bedeviling California with huge power bills in its heyday, Enron Corp. is causing the state more anguish as it crumbles. Six of California’s largest public pension funds lost a combined $250 million when Enron’s once-soaring stock crashed and burned late last year. After peaking at $90.75 at the outset of California’s energy crisis in 2000, Enron’s shares have plunged below 25 cents amid allegations of accounting fraud and insider dealing. The University of California’s pension and endowment funds lost $145 million on its
Enron stock holdings — the most in the state and the second largest setback reported so far by public investment funds across the country. Only Florida’s state retirement system, with $325 million in losses on Enron stock, has been hurt more. The losses of other major California public pension funds surveyed by The Associated Press ranged from $1.6 million to $49 million. As big as they are, the Enron losses represent just a sliver of the pension funds’ total assets, and aren’t expected to affect their ability to pay retirement benefits. The University of California’s funds, for instance, have total assets of $54 billion,
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handler, or they can donate them to a life-size dolphin statue. Either way, they are helping the needy. However, if they use the dolphins, the charitable can be sure their money won’t be used for drugs or alcohol because the coins are collected at the end of the month and redistributed to the many local charities pledged to help the homeless. There are four dolphin banks located throughout Santa Monica: two on the Third Street Promenade, one on Main Street and another located on the Santa Monica Pier. Since the program began in 1993, the dolphins have helped raise about $85,000 — a little more than $14,000 a year. The city’s downtown business community helped create the program. “Not bad for nickels, dimes and quarters,” said Kathleen Rawson, executive director of The Bayside
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District Corporation, which runs the program. “Though, sometimes we find wads of twenties in their too – from the dolphin fairy.” Instead of installing a fifth dolphin on Montana Avenue, Bayside decided to spend the money advertising the program’s existence. Over the holiday season, for example, slides were placed in the city’s movie theaters and advertisements ran on City TV. “Certainly when you put money in the dolphin banks, it’s going directly for services to get people off the streets,” said Rawson, who added that there are many local corporations that also give to the fund, but wish to remain anonymous. “When you give money directly to panhandlers you have no idea of it’s helping the person,” she said. “If all you’re doing is feeding an addiction, you’re certainly not helping.” Homeless panhandlers along Third Street on Monday argued that people should give directly to those in need instead of donating to charities, which they said use the money to pay for See DOLPHINS, page 3
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