Farmers Against City’s Greenbelt Law Appeal to U.S. Supreme Court

VENTURA — Farmers opposed to the city’s landmark voter-endorsed initiative protecting prime farmland from the bulldozer have asked the U. S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the matter.

Arguing that the so-called SOAR initiative flouts property and voting rights, lawyers for some Ventura farmers have appealed to the high court to review an August decision by the state Supreme Court that allowed the law to stand.

Filed Monday, the request for Supreme Court review--known as a petition for writ of certiorari--is a last-ditch effort to kill the greenbelt preservation measure. It forbids the Ventura City Council from allowing development on thousands of acres of farmland until 2030--unless voters sanction it by citywide ballot.

The Supreme Court is being asked to review the case, in part, because farmers who live just outside Ventura city limits were unable to vote on the 1995 initiative but still must live by its words. Lawyers also contend that the law unfairly deprives farmers--but not other landowners--of their property rights.

“If you ran a glue factory, you could go to the City Council and request a change [of land-use designation], but farmers have to jump through the hoops of getting the matter on the ballot and campaigning for voter approval of the ballot measure,” said attorney John H. Findley, who represents the group FAIR--Farmers, Families and Friends Against Irresponsible Regulations.

But backers of the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiative--who are campaigning for a similar countywide measure--are undaunted by the farmers’ request.

The fact that judges in lower courts have been unanimous in upholding the initiative probably means that the nation’s high court won’t be interested either, said Steve Bennett, a chief SOAR proponent. Voters approved the measure by a 52% to 48% margin.

“The Supreme Court will just refuse to hear it,” predicted Bennett, an outgoing Ventura city councilman. “They get thousands and thousands of these requests every year and can only take a small percentage of them.”

Indeed, of the 7,565 cases presented to the Supreme Court in the 1995-96 term, 6,384 were denied review.

“It is completely discretionary for the Supreme Court to take the case or not,” USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky said Thursday. “The odds are always against the court taking any given case.

“On the other hand, this case poses some important questions that the court has not previously dealt with. . . . There are factors that make it more likely the Supreme Court will take the case. Ultimately, it’s impossible to predict.”

One of the case’s appealing elements, he said, is that the initiative essentially freezes farmland in place for 35 years, which could amount to a taking of property rights.

That feature swayed conservation-minded voters two years ago, Bennett said. Many Ventura residents feared that their city was beginning to grow more condos than citrus.

“Ventura County still has a critical mass of agricultural land and open space that is worth protecting,” he said. “But piecemeal development is steadily sweeping the county with urban sprawl.”

So far, lower courts have backed Ventura voters.

The Superior Court dismissed the furious farmers’ claims that their property and equal protection rights were being denied, noting that landowners outside Ventura’s city limits could always ask the County Board of Supervisors for permission to develop their land.

That ruling was later upheld by the 2nd District Court of Appeal, prompting farmers to ask the state Supreme Court to step in. The California Supreme Court, however, refused to hear the case.

The state Supreme Court had previously upheld a nearly identical law from Napa County, approved by voters in 1991.

The continued legal wranglings only strengthen the case for a countywide initiative halting urban expansion, Bennett said.

“It’s just another opportunity for us to get good publicity,” he said. “Each time [a court hears the issue], we have built more support and credibility for a county SOAR initiative.”

Bennett and others are attempting to raise $150,000 before they can start collecting 40,000 signatures needed to place such a measure on the November 1998 ballot.