Slow-Growth Initiative Has Political Pros a Bit Befuddled

A week after an Orange County citizens group unveiled its long-awaited slow-growth proposal, developers and county political leaders say they have not yet decided how to deal with it.

Those who oppose the proposed initiative, which would ban major construction projects in areas where traffic does not move at an average rush-hour speed of at least 30 to 35 m.p.h., reportedly are in a state of confusion.

“It’s not only that they’re in complete disarray,” Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) said. “They’re still in a state of shock, of being stunned. They have very little leadership.”

After a mandatory 21-day period for public comment that began June 14, supporters of the proposal will start gathering the 66,000 signatures needed to qualify it for the June, 1988, ballot.

Drives Planned in 26 Cities

Signature drives are planned for each of the county’s 26 cities.

Last week, initiative sponsors presented the measure to the Board of Supervisors, which ordered a staff review to determine its legal and economic impact. A member of Supervisor Don R. Roth’s staff, who asked not to be identified, said that some developers and supervisors decided immediately after the meeting that “a campaign started today” on both sides.

Board members were cordial at the public session where the initiative was presented, but hostile in private. All said they believe that the language of the proposed initiative should be revised.

And all the supervisors or their top aides said they wished they did not have to respond to it.

“It’s very risky,” said Eileen Padberg, who has managed campaigns for candidates such as Sheriff Brad Gates, Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood and Supervisor Thomas F. Riley. “You need (a response) that gives people some sense of having control.”

Padberg and veteran political consultant Harvey Englander said they believe that the initiative would pass if it were put to a vote right now. But as popular as the concept of limiting growth may seem, they say, politicians fear being linked to anything that may cause an economic downturn.

That is especially true for the supervisors, who, except for Riley, rely heavily on contributions from the development and real estate industries for their reelection campaigns. Riley receives fewer contributions from developers, his aides say, because he is concerned about the public perception that money from developers strongly influences the board’s land-use decisions. There is no shortage of advice on how to approach the initiative, but much of it is contradictory.

Wait-And-See Approach

Some politicians and developers are being urged to take a wait-and-see approach. As one supervisor’s aide put it, this concept is aimed at “making the measure’s supporters work for every inch of media coverage they get,” letting expected legal challenges take their course and focusing public attention on issues such as construction bonds for new jails and the possibility of a half-cent sales tax increase for highway and transit projects.

Others recommend drafting a counterinitiative, seeking adoption by the supervisors of their own traffic-oriented growth-control ordinance, or persuading voters that nothing more is needed.

Indeed, county Environmental Management Agency staff members, who asked not to be identified, say they have been gathering and analyzing information that they believe will be used by the supervisors in drafting a growth-control ordinance of their own.

Ernie Schneider, Environmental Management Agency director, said he could not discuss a rumor that Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez intends to introduce a growth-control measure at an upcoming board session, and Vasquez issued a strong denial. But Vasquez added that he still hopes a compromise will be worked out with initiative supporters so that their proposal will be either changed or dropped.

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder has been working quietly on her own traffic-control ordinance, modeled closely on a measure adopted last April by the Los Angeles City Council; that ordinance requires employers of 700 or more workers to devise daily trip-reduction strategies, including car pools and flexible work hours, or face fines.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday announced his support for a plan to make the ordinance even tougher by applying it to firms that employ as few as 200.

“Something has to give,” said Wieder, a strong critic of the slow-growth initiative. “Or else this initiative battle will end up looking like it’s a case of those for traffic (versus) those against traffic.”

Before the slow-growth initiative was unveiled last week, the Irvine Co. attempted unsuccessfully to find some common ground with the measure’s sponsors.

At a meeting earlier this month at the Balboa Bay Club, Irvine Co. Vice President Thomas H. Nielsen and Gary Hunt, who is company owner Donald L. Bren’s top assistant, talked to San Juan Capistrano rancher Tom Rogers, co-founder of Orange County Tomorrow, the citizens group that drafted the proposed initiative. Irvine Mayor Larry Agran and Irvine Councilman Ray Catalano--both of whom were involved in the effort to put the proposed initiative together--also participated in the discussion.

Rogers said the Irvine Co. executives offered to go along with a weaker initiative--one that had more liberal traffic limits. But Nielsen disputed that account, saying, “Our purpose was really to understand what their goals are.”

Nielsen said the Irvine Co. has not come to any final conclusion about its next step, but added, “Having looked at the initiative, it didn’t seem to represent a workable solution.”

Last fall, Englander approached several builders and developers with the concept of a counterinitiative that would draw support away from Orange County Tomorrow’s slow-growth measure.

“It fell on deaf ears,” Englander, who managed Roth’s successful campaign for the Board of Supervisors, said. “They were afraid to do anything. And as far as I know, they haven’t devised any strategy at all.”

Several building industry sources said they believed Englander was simply trying to drum up business.

“It’s especially risky for developers (to sponsor ballot alternatives),” said Padberg, who has been a consultant to the Irvine Co. “Either they go all-out and try to bury the (slow-growth) thing, or they have to deal with other options that give people a feeling of having control over their own destiny. . . . A diversion in this case would be very difficult because the voters can see which measure gives them the most control.”

Developers are moving cautiously, Padberg said, because they perceive that they cannot be successful supporting a countermeasure that is known as the builders’ proposal.

“That would be a big mistake,” Wieder said. “It’s the worst thing they could do.”

Still, the Santa Margarita Co. confirmed last week that it had asked a Santa Monica-based political consulting firm to find out whether voters would accept an alternative to the slow-growth measure.

Company Vice President Donald Moe said, however, that the survey was not part of a campaign against the Orange County Tomorrow initiative.

In some sense, county supervisors feel frustrated, they say, by the public’s lack of knowledge about steps they already have taken to curb traffic problems, such as requiring developers in some areas to build new roads before they can build new houses.

And developers say they are frustrated by surveys that show the public is largely unaware of the millions of dollars they pay in fees to the county for new roads and freeways.

But Padberg tells them: “That’s always going to be the case. . . . It takes years, if not generations, for the awareness level to change appreciably. The problem is right now, and the initiative supporters want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s over-emotionalized.”

Ferguson, a former Irvine Co. vice president who frequently battled environmentalists before entering the state Legislature, said the only way for developers to win is to couch the fight in terms of economic survival.

“If I was advising them, I’d say don’t any of you big guys stand up. . . . Wait for labor. This is going to end up as a battle between the north and the south, with the Costa Mesa Freeway serving as the Mason-Dixon line. In the north county, voters will become concerned about jobs. And that’s where most of the voters live.

“The issue will become their economic life style versus the south county’s physical (environmental) life style. If it’s reduced to the little citizens against the big guys, there’s no doubt about how it’s going to go.