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La voters suburb reject wal mart supercenter

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   http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2004/04/07/rtr1325557.html

http://www.forbes.com/business/newswire/2004/04/07/rtr1325557.html

Voters in L.A. suburb reject Wal-Mart supercenter
Reuters, 04.07.04, 2:58 AM ET

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Voters in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood Tuesday rejected by a 2-1 margin a ballot measure that would have allowed Wal-Mart to build a sprawling shopping center in the heart of their town.

In voting down the referendum, residents apparently took their cue from elected officials in working-class Inglewood, who fought bitterly to keep Wal-Mart from building a supercenter there despite the promise of 1,200 jobs and millions of dollars in sales tax revenue.

"This was a major victory," said Jerome Horton, a state Assemblyman who represents Inglewood. "This was a test site for Wal-Mart. This would have set a national precedent and developers all over the nation were watching see whether or not a developer could exempt themselves from complying with local laws. This was a much bigger issue than just jobs."

A spokesman for Wal-Mart could not be reached late on Tuesday night for comment on the election returns.

With all 29 precincts reporting, election returns showed 33.8 percent of voters in favor of Measure 04-A and 66.1 percent opposed. Some 3,000 absentee ballots remained uncounted but a spokeswoman for the Inglewood City Clerk said those votes were unlikely to change the result.

The Inglewood City Council had prompted Wal-Mart to appeal to the voters by passing a law to thwart the world's largest retailer and its "big-box" shopping center -- which would have occupied a plot of land the size of 17 football fields -- on the grounds that it would put local mom-and-pop stores out of business and pay lower wages to its employees.

Wal-Mart officials said the opposition to their supercenter was driven by labor unions, who saw the discount retailer as a threat and contributed heavily to Inglewood officials's campaigns. They said the proposed supercenter exceeded city planning standards and would have provided badly needed jobs and low-priced goods to the city, whose residents are mostly black and Hispanic.

Opponents of Measure 04-A, who included four of Inglewood's five council members as well as religious leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, said that the ballot initiative was a bid by Wal-Mart to bully its way past the city's democratic review process.

They had vowed to fight the shopping center in court if Measure 04-A passed.

But Mayor Roosevelt Dorn, one of the few Inglewood officials supporting the measure, said opponents were turning away 1,200 jobs and an estimated $5 million in sales tax revenue and criticized outsiders such as Jackson for interfering in the city's business.

"He's a hired gun who comes in here to tell us not to pass the measure," Dorn told local KCAL-TV. "He didn't bring any jobs. He didn't bring any sales tax revenue. He just brought himself."

Copyright 2004, Reuters News Service


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