Christine Griffith, the lawyer from Ellman, Burke, Hoffman and Johnson who seems to have spent four lawyer-years attacking East Palo Alto with an incessant barrage of contrived lawsuits has hit a new low with her filing attempting to keep the Rent Stabilization measure off the ballot.
In a pleading that will be heard before the court on September 3rd, Griffith claims that the revised RSO should be removed from the ballot so that an environmental review can be conducted. Page Mill essentially wants at all costs to stop the ballot measure from going before the voters. Why? Could it be because her firm has raked in millions attacking the old RSO on technicalities?
Page Mill is apparently so desperate to stop the new, improved RSO that their paid help is willing to argue the following:
Rent control in general and, in particular, a program that so severely restricts rents, is known to result in physical deterioration of properties and neighborhoods subject to rent control to the point of creating physical urban decay or blight. It is now well settled that CEQA requires public agencies to analyze the urban decay or blight effects associated with their decisions. Bakersfield Citizens for Local Control v. City of Bakersfield (2004) 124 Cal.App.4th 1184, 1204 (“if the forecasted economic or social effects of a proposed project directly or indirectly will lead to adverse physical changes in the environment, then CEQA requires disclosure and analysis of these resulting physical impacts”);
This is idiotic. Ms. Griffith is trying to argue that: 1) urban decay will inevitably result from rent control; 2) “urban decay” is somehow an environmental problem; 3) the minor modification of an already existing rent stabilization ordinance constitutes a “physical change in the environment”; and 4) that this inane argument is grounds for a judge to intervene to prevent a ballot measure from going to the people?
Oh, but take her word for it: “this is well settled.” Seems to us something is floating to the top here; it’s far from settled.
One has to ask the question: is there any way for the citizens of East Palo Alto to get an environmental review of Ms. Griffith? There is a lot of hot air being wasted here to no good effect, and it is contributing to global warming. How do we file such a suit?
Wait there is more! In one part of Griffith’s filing it argues that rent stabilization causes a “loss of housing stock” and just a bit later the filing says that the same law also causes “growth inducing impacts,” a tortured way of saying rampant urban growth. Sounds like East Palo Alto’s law, which has been in place for twenty-five years causes simultaneously contradictory events. Oh dear! Perhaps a black hole will open up as a result. Now that would be an “impactful” event!
But, concludes Ms. Griffith, with legal seriousness, “Neither the City Staff nor any City Council member said anything in response…to defend the claims of a CEQA exemption other than to summarily repeat their position that CEQA review was unnecessary” and that a refinement of an existing housing ordinance fell under the “common sense exemption.” Griffith says this about objections she raised at the August 4th meeting, the night the ordinance was approved. Griffith wants every time she comes up with a crackpot suggestion to stop a deliberative process so that she can shut it down with an expensive and pointless study. Truth be told, this “project” is as exempt under CEQA as is putting a new toilet in your house. It’s an existing project that you don’t need to file an exemption for.
Good grief, why can’t we on common sense grounds be exempted from this tortuous argument? Should the City have asked if their Rent Laws also violated the War Powers Act or the rules of Maritime law? How can one be sure?
The only solace here one supposes is that Griffith is doing this work pro bono to save the environment. According to her web page, she’s clearly very concerned about the environment.
Oh, no, wait, sorry: actually, retired school teachers and firefighters are paying for her work out of their retirement money. Griffith charges around $400 an hour to produce this stuff. We’re sure the forty page document was produced in a jiffy.
The disgusting truth about this suit is that is aimed at destroying civil rights. The East Palo Alto City Council had a long series properly noticed public meetings with large attendances that Ms. Griffith attended. Griffith doesn’t claim she didn’t receive notice; rather, in what appears to be an intentional distortion of the notices, Griffith chops up her discussion of the notices and the law to try to give the impression of gross impropriety, when in fact the notices were merely marred by a few typographical errors–fewer errors than one can find in a typical Griffith brief.
The whole of Griffith’s filing revolves around trying to stop the public from being harmed—harmed by being allowed to vote. One would think that the public doesn’t need to be protected from voting on a measure put before the public. But then if one thinks that one would not be the kind of upstanding member of the public that is Page Mill Properties. For reasons that we can’t explain, certain words suddenly come to mind: block, delay, obfuscate, confuse, disenfranchise, lie, bully, intimidate. And if all else fails, argue that a law concerning the environment is somehow an obstacle for revising an existing housing ordinance. Shameful.
Is there nothing money won’t buy?
Calpers is paying Page Mill to attack the City in this stupid way. Incredible, incredible brain blight threatens. Calpers and Page Mill ought to donate some money to environment that their pathetic lawsuits are damaging with all the wasted paper.
Griffith, Page Mill, have you no shame? Page Mill? CalPERs?
