Getting It Together

History is repeating itself in Orange County, and in this case the county should see to it that the repetition goes beyond an exact replica.

Seventeen years ago there was a move to create an intergovernmental council in Orange County. It would have brought together elected city and county officials so that they could coordinate their efforts and tackle some of the countywide problems that plague every community but cannot be resolved by any one governing group. Some examples are traffic congestion and finding sites for major facilities such as airports and jails that the entire county needs but that nobody particularly wants in the neighborhood.

The idea was a good one, if not new, and the county would be a better place today if it had gotten beyond the stage of conversation. Perhaps the idea was dropped because some local officials feared that any kind of official countywide organization would somehow involve a loss of control for local governments over their own affairs. In the voluntary approach suggested back then, there was little danger of that. Perhaps it failed because some elected officials thought that they could solve their own problems without the help of other county communities. Time, if nothing else, has proved that wrong. Or perhaps it might simply have been a matter of bad timing--a good idea, but premature.

Whatever the reason for nearly two decades of talk without any action on creating a formal group to address countywide problems, the idea refuses to die. It has been raised again--this time by Supervisor Harriett Wieder. At her urging, the county board has ordered the county administrative office to conduct a study concerning the possibility of forming a countywide council of governments.

The county already is a member of the Southern California Assn. of Governments. But that organization addresses regional problems. Wieder sees a need for a group that can focus strictly on Orange County issues.

The fact that the idea of a joint approach to joint problems keeps cropping up indicates that public officials are painfully aware that no single community can go it alone when facing problems that recognize no city boundary line. A coordinated local effort was needed in the 1960s and ‘70s. It’s needed even more today.