Supervisors to Stay Neutral in Suit on Slow-Growth Vote

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday not to defend in court their decision to place the slow-growth initiative on the June 7 ballot and then established a citizens committee to evaluate the board’s own growth management plan.

Last week, the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court seeking an order that would bar the county registrar of voters from including the slow-growth initiative on the June ballot.

The supervisors had voted to place the measure on the ballot after slow-growth activists gathered 96,000 signatures in a successful petition effort. But the supervisors decided in executive session Tuesday morning not to side with either the BIA against the scheduled vote or Citizens for Sensible Growth and Traffic Control in support of it.

“We’ll do whatever the court says,” explained Deputy County Counsel Ed Duran. “This simply means that we will not take a position.”

“What we’re saying is, ‘You shouldn’t have named the Board of Supervisors as a defendant because any court order would be directed at the registrar, not the supervisors.’ ”

“We’re not really the defendant anyway,” Board Chairman Harriett M. Wieder said in an interview later. “Their real beef is over the printing of the ballots.”

Registrar Don Tanney, also named as a defendant in the BIA’s lawsuit, is taking a neutral position, too, according to Duran. “His position is that he doesn’t care what the court decides, as long as he can get the ballots printed on time.”

Duran said the county already has informed lawyers for both the BIA and Citizens for Sensible Growth of its position and asked both to stipulate that the Board of Supervisors will not be responsible for court costs or legal fees.

Tom Rogers, a key backer of the initiative, accused the supervisors of “caving in” to the building industry. “They should be four square out front in support of the people’s right to vote on this important issue. They must have their heads screwed on backwards or something. It was a politically dumb thing for them to do.”

“Well, that’s his opinion,” Wieder said. “We have a financial responsibility to the taxpayers to minimize our legal costs and our exposure.”

Peter C. Hoffman, attorney for the BIA in the lawsuit, said the association will agree not to seek court costs from the county if it prevails at a March 23 hearing in the case. But he said the BIA believes that the county was appropriately named a defendant in the case. He declined to elaborate.

Rogers also was critical of the committee established by the supervisors to evaluate their own growth-management plan, saying it will be weighted in favor of developers.

The committee will include two representatives from supporters of the slow-growth initiative, two from the building industry and seven appointed by individual supervisors.

Supervisors said they believe that the panel will be fair because their appointees will be objective. But since all five supervisors have been critical of the initiative, slow-growth proponents said the committee is stacked against them by a 9-2 margin.

“In regards to growth and transportation, it’s going to be a sham,” said Sherry Meddick, a proponent of the initiative. “They may as well ask the (Building Industry Assn., a developers group) what they want in the growth management plan.”

Added Rogers, co-founder of the group that drafted the initiative: “The makeup of the committee, of course, precludes any serious participation from our group. Common sense tells me it’s just a cosmetic inclusion of ourselves in there.”

Still, both Meddick and Rogers said they want to cooperate with the committee so their opinions will be on record with the county. But they said they did not expect their input to be influential.

The supervisors’ growth plan, which they adopted “in concept” last week, is intended to restrict new development and provide funds for more roads, parks and public services such as police and fire stations. The idea behind the citizens committee is to get public input on the board’s plan.

The supervisors have considered putting their plan on the November ballot to “clean up” flaws in the initiative endorsed by slow-growth activists. Wieder has also said the plan should be in place if the initiative is delayed or reversed in an expected court challenge.

If the initiative is passed by voters, it will take precedence legally over the supervisors’ plan in areas where they overlap.

Under the proposed committee makeup, Supervisors Wieder, Roger R. Stanton and Don R. Roth would appoint one member each to the panel. Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Thomas F. Riley would each appoint two members because they represent the largest unincorporated areas where most future growth is planned.

No timetable was announced for the appointments and the board did not ask for volunteers.

“I hope that it will be a fair committee,” Wieder said. “For my part it will be, and I hope that will be true of the other (supervisors).”

“Whoever ends up being the appointees to the committee . . . they will be objective,” Vasquez said. “That’s what’s important.”

Said Riley: “The climate right now is going to be electrically charged with accusations . . . it’s a kind of a no-win situation. I think what we have to do is ensure that our appointments are such that they respond to what’s best for the county.”

The slow-growth initiative scheduled for the June 7 ballot would condition future growth on the ability of local roads and public services to handle additional traffic and higher workloads. The measure also would set minimum standards for parks and emergency services.