County Pushes Key Bills as Legislature Heads Into Final Lap

When the final month of the 1985-86 legislative session gets under way Monday, Orange County officials will be hoping to see legislation pushed through that would limit lawsuits over jet noise from John Wayne Airport and provide more money for transportation projects, a new jail and new courthouses.

So far, it’s been a frustrating legislative year for Orange County supervisors. But local officials say there will be enough key issues left, as California lawmakers return from their monthlong recess, to salvage a successful legislative year.

If county officials have their way on all the remaining items of special interest, “it will be another banner year,” said Supervisor Thomas F. Riley.

The prospects for further disappointments loom, however--particularly with the airport noise issue and the controversy over plans to construct a county jail at Katella Avenue and Douglass Road in Anaheim.

Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) and Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) angered the four-member majority on the Board of Supervisors, which supports the project, by adding a provision to a $495-million jail bond allocation bill that says state money cannot be spent at the jail site near Disneyland and Anaheim Stadium.

The four Republican members of the Board of Supervisors, hoping to win a gubernatorial veto of the measure, have written to Gov. George Deukmejian asking for a meeting to make their case. The supervisors charged that Seymour’s and Robinson’s “motives are strictly political.”

“The siting of local jails should remain the purview of locally elected officials,” the supervisors wrote. “As supervisors, we are the ones who will have to respond to (area residents’) concerns . . . not Sen. Seymour and Assemblyman Robinson.”

But Seymour, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, said he has received personal assurances from Deukmejian that he won’t veto the bill because of the restrictions regarding the Orange County jail site.

“I’m not throwing in the towel,” county lobbyist Dennis E. Carpenter told supervisors during a briefing Friday in Santa Ana. But Carpenter added, “Everybody in the state of California except the County of Orange is now in support of the bill, which doesn’t augur well for us.”

As for the airport noise legislation, the outlook is not as bright as county officials might like. So far they have received no assurances from the governor that he won’t again veto the bill, which would limit the ability of airport-area residents to sue over jet noise.

The legislation, long sought by Orange County and other local governments that own airports, needs one final vote in the Assembly--for approval of minor changes made in the Senate--before it is sent to the governor’s desk. But county officials are hoping they can persuade Robinson, the measure’s author, not to send the bill to the governor without some assurance he won’t veto it.

Deukmejian has vetoed two similar bills in recent years, and county officials are concerned about appearances, with hundreds of pending lawsuits over noise at John Wayne Airport.

Other Prospects Less Gloomy

They fear their biggest obstacle in winning the governor’s support for the legislation may be the vocal opposition of Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), a close administration ally.

The prospects are far less gloomy for other legislation that county officials are backing in the final weeks of the session:

- The Orange County Transportation Commission, facing potential shortfalls in its 10th year of operation as the county’s regional transportation planner, would get a larger share of sales tax revenues under a bill by Bergeson. The measure, which could mean $500,000 annually for the transportation panel, is pending in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

- A measure by Robinson that would make available $300 million in revenue bond financing for a new terminal and parking structure at John Wayne Airport is pending in the Senate Appropriations Committee. Robinson said the measure passed its stiffest test when it was approved by the Senate Local Government Committee.

- On Tuesday, the Assembly Judiciary Committee will reconsider a bill by Bergeson that it narrowly rejected two days before the recess that began July 11. The bill would allow county officials to raise $5 million annually toward construction costs for court buildings by hiking parking and traffic fines. Despite the earlier defeat, Bergeson says she has the votes to get the measure out of the committee.

- The California Highway Patrol could use radar to catch speeders on Ortega Highway under legislation authored by Bergeson. The proposed yearlong experiment is endorsed by the Board of Supervisors. The radar resolution is pending in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

- The county could set up special property tax assessment districts to finance the county’s share of the $1.2-billion Santa Ana River flood control project under a bill by Seymour that is also in the Ways and Means Committee.

‘No Taking Off Early’

County lobbyist Carpenter, a former Republican state senator from Newport Beach, noted that some of the county-backed measures will have to survive several key votes to win passage before legislators begin their final recess Aug. 29.

“There’ll be no taking off early,” Carpenter said last week.

County officials had an ambitious list of legislative proposals when the year began. And with the county’s four senators and eight Assembly members being touted as perhaps the most powerful delegation ever to represent Orange County, their expectations were high.

But county legislators proved they were independent, as well as influential--frequently opposing each other and battling the positions of the Board of Supervisors on several key issues.

Even before Robinson and Seymour engineered their attempt to force county supervisors to abandon the jail site in Anaheim, several county legislative objectives had fallen victim to homegrown disagreements.

Robinson led the opposition to a county-backed bill to safeguard against sheriff-coroner conflicts in jail deaths. The measure, by Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), was killed in an Assembly committee.

Although county officials have long endorsed the concept of toll authorities for financing new roadways, they were forced to ally themselves with toll-road opponents to kill a bill by Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach). Frizzelle adamantly refused to delete provisions regarding which freeways could use tolls and a tax-rebate scheme that county transportation planners opposed.

A county-backed proposal to finance child care centers with industrial development bonds was stalled for months because of a parliamentary snag in a committee that Robinson chairs. Eventually, the committee passed the bill--with Robinson’s backing--but the measure was held in the Assembly awaiting the outcome of tax reform legislation in Washington.

Now, the fate of the child care bill is again uncertain because Bergeson, the bill’s author, deleted the bond provisions when she amended the measure to include legislation authorizing a $300-million loan from the state retirement system to the state treasury. Bergeson, carrying the retirement system loan legislation as a favor to the Deukmejian administration, deleted the child care bonds so the governor’s budget proposal wouldn’t be burdened with a controversial provision that might jeopardize its chances.