Wal-Mart Hopes to Overturn Contra Costa County Ordinance 

SANDY KLEFFMAN / Contra Costa Times 24jun03

Wal-Mart Collects Ink for County Referendum

Wal-Mart has begun gathering signatures in the hope of overturning a Contra Costa County ordinance barring super-size retail centers from opening full-service grocery stores in unincorporated areas.

California Couties
Contra Costa County shaded red

The firm will spend about $100,000 trying to qualify a referendum for the ballot, said Wal-Mart community affairs manager Amy Halley Hill.

"It's a matter of principle," she said. "These types of ordinances are anti-competitive and anti-consumer and we will fight them tooth and nail."

The dispute mirrors battles throughout the country over retail giants.

Supporters like the bargain prices and convenience. Opponents counter that those benefits often come at the expense of smaller retailers and employees who receive low wages.

"They just shouldn't have a super center that's the size of 15 football fields," said Liz Perlman, an organizer for the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, which opposes the Wal-Mart petition drive.

County supervisors approved an ordinance June 3 that applies only to retailers with stores in excess of 90,000 square feet in unincorporated portions of the county.

It bans such super centers from devoting more than 5 percent of their floor space to the sale of nontaxable items such as groceries.

The measure, similar to restrictions approved by Martinez, won strong backing from labor unions and social-justice groups.

But Wal-Mart and other opponents accused county supervisors of being discriminatory, harming consumers and interfering with the free market.

Wal-Mart must turn in 26,487 valid signatures by July 3 to qualify a referendum.

County supervisors would then have the option of repealing the ordinance or placing it on the ballot, probably for the March 2004 election.

Supervisors John Gioia and Mark DeSaulnier said Monday they believe the board would place it on the ballot if the petition drive qualifies.

"I think we'll fight them very vigorously," DeSaulnier said. "I think when people in Contra Costa hear the whole story, they won't be terribly sympathetic."

DeSaulnier predicted that grocery chains and labor unions would campaign to uphold the ordinance.

Wal-Mart hired National Petition Management, a Sacramento company, to gather the signatures.

On Sunday, Gioia went to Wal-Marts in Martinez, Pittsburg and Antioch to listen to what the petition circulators are saying.

Some gathered signatures for or against a recall of Gov. Gray Davis at the same time they circulated the Wal-Mart petitions, he said.

He added that several people gave out wrong information by stating that the ordinance applies countywide or would ban existing Wal-Marts from selling groceries.

Instead, the ordinance applies only to areas that lie outside city limits and thus are governed by the county. It would not apply to existing stores within city boundaries.

"They're being a bit loose with the facts," Gioia said. "It's clear that people signing the petitions are not being told the full and accurate story."

EBASE and ACORN, community groups that support the ordinance, have been monitoring the petition drive and setting up their own information tables alongside the signature-gatherers.

"We've been representing our side of the story," Perlman said. "They've got these paid signature-gatherers from out of town. They're basically carpetbaggers."

Although Wal-Mart has no plan to open a store in unincorporated Contra Costa, the company wants to keep its options open, Hill said.

She noted that in Nevada's Clark County, commissioners repealed a similar ordinance after Wal-Mart qualified a referendum.

"We would never enter into this unless we believed there was a real opportunity for us to be successful on the ballot."

source: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/news/6157277.htm 24jun03