Orange County Initiative Drive : Secret Meetings Shock Slow-Growth Supporters

Slow-growth initiative supporters said Friday they were stunned to learn of closed-door discussions between the chairman of their movement and Orange County’s five supervisors concerning a proposal to end the countywide initiative effort.

“You’re kidding,” said Sue Shuff of Irvine, who has spent several recent weekends gathering signatures to help qualify the slow-growth measure for the countywide ballot in June. “After we worked our buns off, they want to do what?”

Tom Rogers, chairman of the organization that drafted the slow-growth initiative, met privately Thursday with former Supervisor Bruce Nestande and each Slow-growth petition gatherers expressed a new sense of urgency and wariness over talk of a compromise. Part II, Page 1.

of the county supervisors to discuss an alternative to the ballot measure that was drafted by Nestande.

Nestande, now a vice president with Arnel Development Co., said the plan has been approved in concept by several developers, though he would not identify them. It calls for a powerful new county agency that would coordinate transportation and development decisions.

Russ Burkett, executive director of the organization that Rogers chairs, was indignant about the meetings Thursday.

“Tom was suffering from temporary insanity yesterday,” he said. “There’s absolutely no deal to do anything, and we’re going full speed ahead.”

Initiative supporters face a Feb. 9 deadline for submitting nearly 66,000 signatures to the county registrar of voters to qualify the measure for the countywide ballot in June.

Under Nestande’s proposal, a citizens commission would be appointed to study creation of an agency to coordinate traffic and development decisions, as well as a countywide program for phasing future growth and a proposed half-cent sales tax for transportation projects.

Explaining his decision to meet with the supervisors, Rogers disclosed Friday that other compromises had been explored in secret meetings recently between initiative supporters and builders. He said he had not participated in those meetings and agreed to Thursday’s discussions because he feared the supervisors were getting misleading information.

“I was concerned that the people who were representing the other side (builders) are not reliable to report accurately our position,” he said, adding that he was livid about a letter the Building Industry Assn. of Orange County sent to its members Thursday.

‘Strike a Deal’

The letter, signed by BIA Executive Director John Erskine, said slow-growth initiative backers wanted to “strike a deal” and urged BIA members to call or write with their reaction.

Norm Grossman, a Laguna Greenbelt Inc. member who attended a meeting Wednesday night that led Erskine to write the letter, said it was the builders who asked, “Is there anything that you would accept that would not take this to an election?”

Erskine was attending a builders’ conference in Dallas on Friday and could not be reached for comment after The Times obtained a copy of the BIA letter. Earlier in the day, however, he said he had “merely tried to get all of the players in the same room together.”

The Wednesday meeting was held at contractor Mike Ray’s office in Irvine. It was attended by Ray; Building Industry Assn. President Gordon Tippell of Taylor Woodrow Homes; Erskine; Rob Martin, who was representing builder-financier Howard Ahmanson; Laguna Greenbelt Inc. attorney Belinda Blacketer; Grossman; initiative campaign treasurer Gregory A. Hile, and Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young, who is a developer.

Grossman and Hile said they were invited to the meeting to discuss ways of financing the road improvements that would be required if the initiative passes.

Both men said they told the builders the petition effort might be halted if the supervisors agreed to certain conditions, including a moratorium on development agreements that would insulate builders from the impact of any kind of a slow-growth measure. Several such agreements, which require developers to pay for new roads before they complete their construction projects, have been approved by the Board of Supervisors recently.

Grossman said Young and Erskine had agreed to set up talks with the supervisors beginning Monday.

Two Strike First

But Rogers and Nestande struck first.

Rogers said he has been worried that passage of the initiative will prompt court challenges and that a great deal of development would occur before a long legal battle could be resolved. Nestande said he was motivated in part by a desire to solve traffic problems without an initiative that could be “terribly flawed” but could not be changed legally except by voters.

“The current institutions cannot solve this problem,” Nestande said. “The public absolutely has a right to demand that things get better, and right now they are going to get worse unless something is done.”

Burkett was furious that Rogers, his longtime friend and neighbor, had not told him of his plan to visit supervisors with Nestande beforehand.

“Rogers only represented himself,” Burkett said. “Nestande obviously was presenting the county’s own proposal right back to the county, but the supervisors now think it was a plan from our side.”

Nestande acknowledged Friday that he had discussed his proposal “conceptually” with some county officials, but he declined to name them. He said none of the supervisors knew specific details of his plan before he and Rogers walked into their offices Thursday afternoon.

Hile and Grossman said there would be a meeting of initiative supporters today, during which a decision would be made about whether to pursue further discussions with supervisors and developers on Monday.

They denied Friday that the possibility of a negotiated end to their petition drive had seriously split their ranks.

‘Stick to Guns’

But Stephen Goldberger, founder of Residents for Responsible Growth in Costa Mesa, said initiative leaders should “stick to their guns” and not abandon the petition drive.

Like the Gann Initiative, which placed restrictions on government spending, the slow-growth measure would “force county officials to address the transportation crisis,” said Goldberger, who has spent weekends gathering petition signatures.

The alternative, he said, is giving an agency a “blank check” to spend months, if not years, hashing out solutions. “This way,” he added, “the initiative would bring this issue to a head--now.”

Irvine Mayor Larry Agran raised the possibility that Nestande’s proposal might be part of an 11th-hour ploy by developers to sidetrack the slow-growth measure, but most leaders of the initiative movement said Friday they do not oppose negotiations with the supervisors.

“There is a consensus among us to see if they are in a mood to do something,” Hile said. “But we’re in a strong position, and I don’t really think the supervisors want to give us what we want.”

Bill Speros, who has coordinated the signature-gathering effort in Irvine and several surrounding communities, was skeptical that Nestande’s proposed new transportation agency would have any credibility with the public.

“This smacks of another good old boy network, something we’ve got too much of already in this county,” Speros said.

In Costa Mesa, where growth has been a pivotal issue in recent years, Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle said she would welcome an agreement that would end the initiative drive. She said that if the ballot measure is approved, “the only winners will be attorneys because it is bound to wind up in court.”

Hile, who serves as treasurer of the group circulating petitions to get the initiative on the ballot, said he believes negotiations can be useful. But he cautioned that neither he nor other initiative sponsors will accept anything that does not contain the major goals of the proposed ballot measure.