Litter’s Still a Sore Subject With Stirling

Assemblyman Larry Stirling no longer carries around a Polaroid camera to snap photos of trash and other eyesores the way he did as a city councilman. But spend a few minutes with Stirling and you’ll get the picture: He loathes litter.

Stirling, a San Diego Republican in his fourth term in the Legislature, has carved out something of a niche for himself here on the issues of highway landscaping and trash, problems that may hit home to the everyday citizen but don’t provide the political mileage that legislators usually crave.

So when the California Department of Transportation wanted permission to put commercial logos on the bright orange trash bags they use alongside state highways, they naturally turned to Stirling to carry the bill. Stirling and Caltrans contended that the state could save as much as $500,000 a year if private companies would donate the advertising-laden bags.

Leading Advocate

Though that scheme was scuttled, at least temporarily, by an Assembly committee unhappy with Caltrans’ unwillingness to allow roadside markers in memory of people killed in accidents with drunk drivers, Stirling remains perhaps the Legislature’s most articulate spokesman for cleaner highways.

Fighting his war on several fronts, Stirling has used personal pressure on Caltrans, legislation and innovative administrative proposals as weapons in the battle. Though he admits his progress has been slow, Stirling is showing no signs of giving up.

“I don’t think that because we live in cities that we need to be assaulted by the scene of litter stacked up alongside our roads,” Stirling, 45, said in a recent interview. “I think with a certain amount of intellectual effort and management effort we could clean those roadsides, and I think we could clean them every day.”

Stirling isn’t above taking the issue into his own hands. Once, shortly after calling Caltrans officials to prompt a cleanup of Interstate 15, he found himself driving behind two trash trucks that were dropping garbage along the same highway.

“I drove up alongside them, got the company names, and got a description of the guys,” he said of the incident. “I called the Highway Patrol and said, ‘Meet me at so and so--I’m going to make a citizen’s arrest.’ ” He said the CHP asked him for the trucks’ identification numbers and handled it themselves.

Cleanup Program

Stirling has been a strong supporter of using county probationers to clean the highways. San Diego has been a leader in that field and Stirling has worked to expand the program statewide, said Bill Dotson, director of Caltrans’ San Diego district.

Convinced that the way Caltrans picks up litter--mostly by hand--is archaic, Stirling sponsored an engineering contest offering a $5,000 reward for the design of what he called a “garbage gobbler,” an all-terrain vehicle that could pick up trash alongside the freeways and the landscaped embankments. Caltrans turned down the 20 or so suggestions submitted and now Stirling is talking of upping the bounty--which would be paid by the Beer Wholesaler’s Assn.--to $10,000.

Stirling remains optimistic. “I think in a country where we can figure out a way to harvest potatoes and tomatoes and get the seeds out of cotton that we can darn sure figure out a way to have a machine pick up the trash along the freeway,” he said in frustration.

Other Stirling proposals have taken the form of legislation.

He won passage, for instance, of a bill requiring Caltrans to phase out water-intensive landscaping in favor of plantings that could survive a drought. The bill also required the department to use reclaimed sewage water for landscaping whenever possible.

That bill, Stirling figures, not only protects the state’s investment in roadside greenery, which would be the first thing to suffer in a water shortage, but also provides a stable customer for reclaimed water and establishes a separate pipeline for the water that could be tapped for other uses in a drought. As a result of Stirling’s urging, a three-mile stretch of Interstate 15 will be irrigated with reclaimed water beginning next month.

Courtesy Ads for Helpers

Another Stirling bill allows private companies to landscape a section of highway in cooperation with Caltrans and in exchange receive permission to install a small “courtesy” advertisement sign boasting of their contribution.

While he won passage of that legislation in the last session, no one has come forward to take advantage of the new law, in part, Stirling believes, because Caltrans has a reputation for jealously guarding its power over the roadside right-of-way.

‘Rested on Their Oars’

“They’ve thrown up every roadblock, literally and figuratively, that they can find,” Stirling said. “Mostly they’ve just rested on their oars. I can’t do anything more than authorize them to do it.”

Another Stirling proposal that fell short was his idea to make the owner of a vehicle liable for any litter thrown from its windows. Under current law the police have to catch the person who actually threw the litter. The change Stirling recommends would have made it easier to prosecute laws against littering, he argues.

“It would be just like a parking ticket, where they presume that you’re the one who parked there,” Stirling said. “I was trying to presume that if the trash was coming out of your car, you either did it or you were responsible for the person who did it. It’s just a stupid rule the way it’s set up.”

Stirling, who is chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, is respected for his work on criminal justice issues and is seen as an expert on the state’s retirement funds. But his work on the litter issue has helped fuel his reputation as a legislator willing to delve into the details of technical problems that often get lost amid the highly publicized partisan struggles over such issues as welfare, education, crime and taxes.

Stirling was known for the same traits when he was a San Diego city councilman from 1977 until 1980. That was when he used to take pictures of public eyesores to prompt the city manager to act. He often dictated into a tape recorder as he drove to City Hall, describing problems he saw so that his aides could begin work to correct them.

A former Stirling aide once told The Times that the then-councilman, driving in Golden Hill one day, was offended by the sight of a beat-up city trash can.

“So he picked it up and put it in his van and dropped it off to the city manager,” the aide said.

Civil Servants Irritated

Such tactics, of course, can irritate the civil servants who are hired to do that kind of work. Though they won’t say it outright, Caltrans officials hint that Stirling often seems impatient. They point out, for example, that they would be searching for a more efficient machine to pick up litter even without his prompting, and the use of people convicted of minor crimes to clean the highways was the department’s idea.

“He didn’t really have to urge us to do that,” said Dotson, Caltrans’ top San Diego official.

“He’s very energetic and interested and anxious to get things done in a hurry,” Dotson added. “He’s constantly looking for new and better ways to do things.”

City Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who once worked for Stirling, said she often saw him frustrated by the system’s inability to solve what he saw as a simple problem.

“Other people learn to live with it; Larry doesn’t,” she said. “He wants to do something about it and that’s what’s frustrating. No one else seems to take it as seriously as he does.”

Assemblyman Richard Katz, a Sepulveda Democrat and chairman of the Transportation Committee, said Stirling seems to enjoy the intellectual give and take with state administrators, even on mundane matters. He said Stirling’s preoccupation with litter is a reflection of San Diego’s reputation as a clean city.

“He’s always looking for non-traditional ways to solve age-old problems, and I think he loves doing that,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), chairman of the Transportation Committee. “I think there’s a Rube Goldberg element to Larry.”

Stirling is sometimes kidded about his interest in the litter issue and even pokes fun at himself, as he did when he joked recently that he thinks Caltrans has begun placing full trash bags along Interstate 15 to make him think they’ve just cleaned the highway. But Stirling said he considers litter a serious matter.

“The tradition of gardening and landscaping contributes to our sense of well-being about ourselves,” he said. “I think we could have the roadsides be attractive horticultural experiences that contribute to our sense of pride about ourselves and our community.”