Supporters of Slow Growth Accuse County of Delaying Initiative Drive

With Supervisor Don R. Roth lashing out at the proposed countywide slow-growth initiative, its supporters accused county officials Friday of misleading them into delaying their signature-gathering drive on behalf of the proposed ballot measure.

“I don’t think they’ve dealt with us in good faith,” said Gregory Hile, an Irvine attorney who helped draft the initiative.

Hile and initiative co-sponsor Russell Burkett of San Juan Capistrano said proponents were promised helpful suggestions from the Board of Supervisors if they would hold up their effort to gather the signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot in June, 1988.

But they said they have heard nothing except a county staff complaint that it will cost $1.3 billion to satisfy the measure’s requirements for parks, roads and public safety measures before growth in some areas could proceed.

“The numbers are false,” Hile said. “They (county officials) are perpetrating a fraud on the people.”

Roth, in a letter made public Friday, said of the initiative: “It is critical that we not let it become law. The economic impacts would damage our entire region.”

Although supervisors have previously criticized some aspects of the measure as unworkable, Roth’s letter is the harshest board comment to date.

Aimed primarily at easing the county’s traffic problems, the initiative would bar construction of major commercial and residential projects except where commute traffic moves at an average speed of at least 30-35 m.p.h. and where police, fire, recreational facilities and flood control meet specific requirements.

Proponents have 153 days in which to qualify the measure for the June, 1988, ballot by collecting 66,000 signatures of registered county voters. Proponents also plan to qualify the measure for citywide votes in each of the county’s 26 municipalities or have the measure adopted by city councils.

The failure of the supervisors to take an official position on the initiative has disappointed proponents, leading some to believe that the board may never confront the issue head on. Some proponents have hoped that the board would propose an alternative measure that they could support, making a costly, bitter election battle unnecessary.

Under state law, proponents faced a mandatory 21-day waiting period for receiving public comments before they could collect signatures on the measure’s behalf. Although the 21-day public comment period ended July 4, proponents voluntarily extended it until Sunday at the request of county officials, who asked more time.

“We were expecting something more, and as of right now we have nothing,” Burkett said. “We haven’t even received a copy of the county’s study.”

Hile said a revised initiative reflecting some of the comments received by proponents would be unveiled in a few days.

Despite Sunday’s deadline for comments aimed at changing the initiative’s wording, Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said the county staff’s economic impact analysis will form only part of the supervisors’ eventual response to the initiative.

Riley said he wanted to “provide to the public a complete pattern” of the county’s actions on transportation--including recently adopted road improvement programs--”so we can make a judgment call without name-calling.”

However, Scott Morgan, executive assistant to Chairman Roger R. Stanton, said the board was unlikely to submit anything new to initiative proponents before their signature-gathering begins.