Laguna Niguel Leaders Poke Legal Thumb in Coastal Plum

After months of public hearings and heated debate, the battle over whether Laguna Niguel or Dana Point should have jurisdiction over the lucrative Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel hotel and an adjoining one-mile strip of coastal land has finally wound up in court.

Laguna Niguel cityhood leaders filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block Orange County’s Local Agency Formation Commission from including the disputed strip in Dana Point’s scheduled June 7 incorporation election.

The suit, filed in Superior Court in Santa Ana by the Laguna Niguel Citizens Task Force for Incorporation, asks that a judge nullify LAFCO’s January decision to include the strip in Dana Point’s election and, instead, make it available to Laguna Niguel. Laguna Niguel’s cityhood petition comes up for review before LAFCO in May.

The coastal strip is located between Dana Point and South Laguna and includes the highly coveted Ritz-Carlton, which generates $2.5 million in annual tax revenue. Organizers of Laguna Niguel’s cityhood drive claim the strip as an original part of the 25-year-old planned community. And they say they will fight to keep it.

“We will not settle for anything less than the coast,” said task force chairman Bruce Rasner.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit, besides LAFCO, are the county Board of Supervisors, which called the Dana Point election, and the county registrar of voters, whose office is to conduct it.

The task force contends in the suit that, among other things, the county illegally included the coastal strip in Dana Point’s election by:

- Failing to consider hours of testimony provided by Laguna Niguel cityhood proponents in the public hearings on the subject.

- Calling an advisory election in November, 1987, of affected coastal residents without including other residents of Laguna Niguel in the non-binding vote. (The 1,379 voters in that strip voted by a 3-2 margin to join Dana Point rather than Laguna Niguel in any cityhood petitions.)

- Violating the state’s Ralph M. Brown Act by determining the boundaries of the Nov. 3 advisory election outside a previously announced public meeting.

County officials Tuesday denied the allegations, saying the task force members already have expressed themselves in the five public hearings LAFCO has held on the subject over the past year.

“Everything that they have raised to date has been incorrect,” said Deputy County Counsel Benjamin de Mayo. “I just don’t see any basis for a legal challenge.”

Responding to the claim that LAFCO’s five commissioners did not consider the hours of testimony provided by the task force, de Mayo said: “I think LAFCO very patiently listened to all the testimony. Just because LAFCO didn’t agree with their position doesn’t mean they didn’t consider their testimony.”

Rasner charged, however, that LAFCO failed to deliberate when making its decision Jan. 27 to include the coastal strip in Dana Point’s cityhood drive, despite having just heard three hours of testimony from Laguna Niguel residents protesting such an action.

2,400 Residents Excluded

On the matter of the advisory election, de Mayo said that only the coastal residents were included because a question had arisen in the debate last year on whether they desired incorporation with Dana Point or Laguna Niguel. De Mayo said LAFCO wanted to find out which they wanted.

Rasner said, however, that the advisory election’s boundaries excluded about 2,400 residents living within view of the ocean. He maintained that they, too, should have been allowed a voice in the matter.

Finally, as to the alleged violation of the Brown Act, which prohibits public business being conducted in secret, de Mayo maintained that nothing has been conducted behind closed doors. On the contrary, he said, “there were probably more public hearings on this item than any other matter in LAFCO history.”

De Mayo said Tuesday that he could not assess the lawsuit’s potential impact on Dana Point’s cityhood election because he had not yet reviewed it.

A hearing date has not been set on the suit. Rasner said his task force has raised $65,000 for a legal war chest.