Petitions

In response to petitions signed by 3,000 teachers across California, the state Board of Education on Thursday added three members to a panel rewriting guidelines for math instruction to provide balance between so-called "reformers" and those who favor a more traditional approach.

A write-in candidate for governor in the 2003 recall election was sentenced to three months in jail for falsifying signatures on his nomination petitions, the secretary of state's office announced Thursday. David Charles Scully of Davis had campaigned to replace Gov. Gray Davis in the October 2003 special election. The election featured 135 candidates, including Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, former "Diff'rent Strokes" actor Gary Coleman and adult-film actress Mary Carey. Gov.

Holding up petitions that he said carried the names of dead people, minors and foreigners, President Hugo Chavez said Friday that he would appeal to Venezuela's Supreme Court if election officials accepted them and held a recall vote against him. Chavez's comments fueled a growing dispute over the verification of 3.4 million signatures that opposition leaders said they had turned in to demand the recall.

The City Council on Monday night certified two recall petitions targeting Mayor Cecilia L. Age and Councilwoman Gail H. Kerry, but decided to wait until the July 10 meeting to set a date for the recall election. City Atty. John E. Cavanaugh said recent changes in state law have clouded the legal picture for recall special elections, adding that he needed to do additional research before setting an election date.

A judge will hear arguments next month on whether Agoura Hills and Los Angeles County had the right to disqualify numerous signatures on petitions to recall the entire Agoura Hills City Council. The case will be heard by Judge Diane Wayne in Los Angeles Superior Court on May 26 at 9:30 a.m., court officials said. The group leading the recall attempt maintains that the disqualified signatures, had they been counted, would have forced a recall election for at least one member.

An Orange County judge ruled Tuesday that supporters of a plan to build a park instead of an international airport must start over in collecting voter signatures to put an initiative on the March ballot. It is the fourth time since May that supporters of a park at the former El Toro Marine Base will have to restart their signature drive, raising serious doubts about whether they have enough time to get the 71,206 valid signatures required by the Sept. 18 deadline.

A Van-Nuys based coalition to recall Mayor Tom Bradley said Thursday that it has not gathered enough signatures on petitions to meet today's deadline to put the issue before voters. Businessman Robert Colaco, who heads the coalition, said he did not know how many signatures volunteers had collected, but he estimated they had gathered fewer than half of the185,000 needed.

Backers of a bid to build a park instead of an airport at the El Toro Marine base said a judge's order invalidating petitions collected so far would affect 128,000 signatures, far more than the 50,000 first believed. Len Kranser of Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities said organizers did a more thorough count after Judge James Gray's ruling Tuesday. That count found that organizers were much further along in the process than was thought.

A group of slow-growth advocates submitted four cardboard boxes of petitions to the city Wednesday aimed at overturning the planned 3,800-home Westpark II project, the first village approved by the city in five years. The petitions delivered by Irvine Tomorrow contain about 8,600 signatures, about 3,000 more than needed to place the housing project on the ballot.

A measure to limit City Council members to two consecutive terms, or eight years, has been disqualified because petitioners were 281 signatures short of the required 6,559 names. Review by the Orange County registrar of voters found that 1,069 of the 7,347 signatures submitted by the citizens group Newport Residents to Limit Council Terms were invalid, City Clerk Wanda Raggio said. Only residents of Newport Beach who were registered voters as of May 7 could be counted.