Wish List : County Hands Its Sacramento Lobbyist a Legislative Agenda for 1986

Orange County officials handed a wish list to their Sacramento lobbyist Friday, asking for laws on parking fines, recycling centers, parks and landfills.

Many of the laws the county wants would raise money or cut costs. One proposal, for example, would add $1 to every $10 of a traffic fine. It also would add $1.50 to each parking violation.

Those dollars, which the county administrative office estimated at more than $5 million in a year, would go into a fund to build a new Juvenile Court and a new Superior Court.

Earlier this year, the county tried to obtain legislation increasing its share of traffic fines from 15 to 20%, a move “immediately criticized and opposed by nearly every city in this county,” County Administrative Officer Larry Parrish said.

No Agreement With Cities

The county currently gets 15% of traffic fines, and the city in which the violation takes place gets 85%.

That bill was withdrawn, and the county still has not reached agreement with the cities on changing the ratio.

Another item on the county’s wish list would allow the Environmental Management Agency to require developers of small residential areas to dedicate land for local parks.

Currently, if a developer is building fewer than 50 units, he can pay a fee instead of providing space for a park.

Another of the 15 proposed laws handed to county lobbyist Dennis E. Carpenter would allow soil rather than clay to be used to cover completed landfills. Water quality regulations require the use of clay to ensure that rain runs off the landfills and not into them.

Frank Bowerman, a manager with the county General Services Agency, said the region gets so little rain that it runs off landfills anyway. By using soil instead of clay, he said, the county’s savings “could easily exceed $10 million,” Parrish said.

Carpenter cautioned the supervisors that passage of the law “might be tough if water quality people take a difficult stance,” but Bowerman said there had been no indication of opposition.

The General Services Agency also proposed a law that would set up a state fund of $100 million for loans and grants to establish recycling plants.

The agency estimated it could recycle as much as 25% of the paper products, metals, cans, bottles and other trash now dumped in landfills.

The county’s Washington lobbyist, Jim McConnell, also told the supervisors and representatives of county agencies at a meeting Friday that Orange County could suffer a drop in federal funds for assistance to Vietnamese refugees next year.

McConnell said the legislation requiring reduced federal deficits, which President Reagan signed Thursday, would force Congress to cut some existing programs by amounts to be determined later. Money for Vietnamese refugee programs could be one of those cuts, he said.