Appellate Court Upholds 3 Mission Viejo City Council Member Removal

Without finding any abuse of discretion, a California appellate court upheld a trial court’s ruling which removed three Mission Viejo City Councilmembers last year.

The three former councilmembers, Ed Sachs, Wendy Bucknum, and Greg Raths allegedly stayed in office beyond their elected two-year terms.

“We uphold the results of the November 2018 municipal election by affirming the judgment of quo warranto,” wrote Fourth District Court of Appeal Justices in their Dec. 4 opinion. “The judgment adjudges Sachs, Bucknum, and Raths to be “guilty of usurping or intruding into, or unlawfully holding . . . office as members of the City Council of Mission Viejo.”

The case came about on appeal after Orange County Superior Court Judge Walter Schwarm vacated their elected offices based on a Quo Warranto legal action filed by Mission Viejo resident Michael Schlesinger.

A quo warranto is a special form of legal action used to test a politicians right to hold office that he or she was elected to.

“This looks as though the holdover provisions of Section 57377 and the Mission Viejo Municipal Code might have granted Sachs, Bucknum, and Raths the right to hold office until the election and qualification of their successors in November 2022,” the decision states. “But we agree with plaintiff that the holdover provisions were intended only to prevent brief vacancies in office following an election and do not permit elected officeholders who have the power to call an election to stay in office by failing to call one.”

Section 57377 of the California Government Code sets the terms of office for city council members.

Raths, a Republican, declined to comment specifically on the litigation.

“I live in Texas now,” he said. “It’s great. There’s no income tax and the price of gas is $2.29.”

The former Mission Viejo resident previously said that he was disappointed and demoralized about being removed from office but when asked if he would run for office in Texas, Raths rejected the idea.

“I’m 70 years old so I’m done with politics,” he told OrangeCountyLawyers.com.

The City of Mission Viejo had allegedly extended the terms of the three councilmembers from two to four years in June 2020 without a public hearing after it had refused to adopt district-based elections in 2018.

Instead, city officials claimed they would implement a ‘cumulative voting system’ but the Secretary of State decided that such a cumulative voting system was not legal for general law cities like Mission Viejo.

A general law city is one that has not adopted a charter.

Underlying the appeal is a prior settlement agreement in which the city of Mission Viejo had agreed to create district voting that would ideally result in five open seats based on the Voting Rights of 2001.

The Voting Rights Act of 2001 includes a provision that allows implementing district voting where communities of color are disenfranchised by at-large elections.

“Had the Mission Viejo City Council complied with a prior settlement agreement, the Orange County judge would not have removed three council members,” said retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell who wrote the book ‘Her Honor: My Life on the Bench…What Works, What’s Broken, and How to Change It.’