Oxnard’s legal battle with freshman Councilman Aaron Starr isn’t over yet. Here’s what you need to know

Aaron Starr has worked for years to change Oxnard policy outside of City Hall, introducing ballot measures and fighting the city in more than a dozen lawsuits.

When he was sworn in as a city council member on Dec. 11, a handful of legal cases were still pending. Two weeks later, one of them was on the council’s agenda.

On Dec. 20, a federal appeals court issued a ruling in favor of Starr in Starr’s 2020 case against the city’s campaign contribution limits.

City council will meet behind closed doors on Monday to consider its response to the appeals court ruling. The meeting was the first to explore how the city will handle its legal dispute with Starr, who is involved with three other council newbies.

It’s not unprecedented for a sitting city council member to fight his or her own city in court — former Oxnard Mayor Tim Flynn, for example, sued the city in 2007 and 2008 — but with the The number of lawsuits filed against Tarr in Oxnard is not matched by many.

Starr said he took Oxnard to court over the years only after the city dismissed his various concerns about the legality of its actions.

The councilor has already feuded with some of his new colleagues in his first few weeks on the job and has not ruled out future legal action. But he noted that as an elected official, he has options outside of court.

“I have every reason to believe it will achieve better results,” he said.

Chief Assistant City Attorney Kenneth Rozelle said the city does not anticipate any changes in how it handles pending litigation with Starr unless a majority of the City Council decides.

“We are ready, willing and able to work with him,” he said. “We have a very professional staff.”

The California Fair Political Practices Commission (commonly known as the FPPC) prohibits officials with any “disqualified conflict of interest” from making or using their position to influence government decisions related to that conflict.

Rozelle said that means Starr will be required to recuse himself from parliamentary discussions of his case, including Monday’s discussion.

In an interview on December 16, ahead of the appeals court’s ruling, Starr said he still needed to study the FPPC rules carefully and believed that under certain conditions he would have the opportunity to participate in some of those discussions.

He declined to say Tuesday whether he planned to recuse himself from upcoming closed-door discussions.

The committee will meet Monday at 5 p.m. in the conference room, 305 West Third Street.

Campaign contribution limits

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a split decision on Dec. 20 that the city targeted Starr over a 2020 ballot measure that limited the amount an individual could donate to a political campaign.

The three-judge panel’s ruling reversed the federal district court’s earlier ruling and sent it back to the court with an order to rewrite the judgment.

Although Rozelle declined Tuesday to say what options will be presented to the City Council at its upcoming meeting, the city can still respond to the appeals court ruling.

Starr’s nonprofit Moving Oxnard Forward campaigned for Oxnard’s Measure B, a city-sponsored ballot measure that included a cap on individual political campaign contributions, during the March 2020 primary election The lawsuit was filed after passing with 82.5% of the vote.

U.S. Circuit Judge Daniel Collins wrote the court’s ruling, which found that Oxnard targeted Starr in both the creation and promotion of the measure.

Starr ran unsuccessfully for a council seat five times between 2014 and 2020, and Push Oxnard Forward supported multiple ballot measures during that time, most of which were successful. In those campaigns, Starr tended to raise large amounts of money from a handful of donors, making them an outlier among Oxnard candidates, the decision said.

Measure B, the court wrote, “has had little practical impact on candidates in recent municipal elections, with the exception of Aaron Starr.”

The opinion said the city’s own materials promoting the measure featured Starr as a “poster child,” with a two-slide presentation page citing Starr’s campaign contribution record as an example without the city directly naming him. name.

U.S. Circuit Judge Mark Bennett wrote in a dissenting opinion that the record supports the city’s contention that it was trying to thwart potential corruption.

Starr said he was “very aware” that he was a target of the donation limit.

“The people most affected by this are not the incumbents,” he said. “It’s me.”

Starr’s council campaign this year is governed by the city’s campaign contribution rules and is mostly self-funded.

Rozelle said the city was not pursuing Starr but wanted to continue its break with the corruption scandal that engulfed City Hall in 2010. He said the city attorney believed the measure complied with existing law.

According to the FPPC, a state law passed in 2021 sets a default campaign contribution limit for cities and counties that do not have their own campaign contribution limits.

This is what comes next

In addition to the campaign contribution lawsuit, several lawsuits remain active between Starr and the city.

• Auditor: On Nov. 26, a county judge ruled in favor of Starr, saying Oxnard violated a state statute that limits the number of consecutive years a city can retain the same third-party auditor. Rozelle said the city does not plan to appeal.

• Riverside Park Tax: Starr sued the city in July, alleging the validity of a city ordinance related to the Riverpark special tax ballot measure that prohibits the city from replacing some special tax expenditures with general fund funds. The case is scheduled for a Jan. 7 hearing in Ventura County Superior Court.

• Lease Revenue Bonds: Starr sued the city in December 2022 to adopt lease revenue bonds. In December 2023, a county judge ruled in the city’s preliminary favor; Starr appealed. The case is scheduled for a March 24 hearing in the state’s 2nd Appellate District Court.

• Pension obligation bonds: A county judge and a state appeals court affirmed Oxnard’s handling of pension obligation bonds. The lawsuit is currently before the California Supreme Court, and Starr said it is expected to continue following a San Jose court ruling in a similar case.

Isaiah Murtaugh covers Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo for the Ventura County Star. Contact him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @Isaiah Murtaugh.

This article originally appeared in the Ventura County Star: Oxnard’s legal battle with Assemblyman Aaron Starr continues