San Juan Councilman Resigns From LAFCO

San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Phillip R. Schwartze has resigned from the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission after eight years, saying that upcoming commitments to other committees will pose a time conflict.

He said a conflict-of-interest investigation, which exonerated him, had nothing to do with his departure from the five-member commission that rules on often controversial incorporation and annexation proposals.

His departure is the latest in a string that is leading to almost complete turnover on the commission. Two county supervisor members recently left the commission and the agency’s executive director, Dick Turner, has announced he will resign as soon as a replacement can be found.

“With all these hearings and plans to meet once a week for hours and hours, I just can’t do it all,” Schwartze said Wednesday, referring to upcoming LAFCO public hearings on incorporation proposals for Saddleback Valley, Laguna Hills and Laguna Niguel.

Cities League Post

Schwartze will become president of the Orange County division of the League of Cities in October, and also will be a member of the newly formed Orange County Coordinating Committee. He said he would have remained on LAFCO if he didn’t have the other two obligations.

When asked if his resignation was related to an Orange County Grand Jury investigation for an alleged conflict of interest earlier this year, Schwartze said: “That’s all come and gone months ago and it had nothing to do with this.”

The Grand Jury concluded in March that there was no basis to press charges against Schwartze, who is vice president of Phillips Brandt Reddick, an environmental research and planning firm in Irvine that has a contract with the M.H. Sherman Co, owners of property in coastal Laguna Niguel.

The Grand Jury had received written requests from about 150 Laguna Niguel residents to investigate Schwartze and other members of LAFCO, which had voted to give a coastal portion of Laguna Niguel to the proposed city of Dana Point.

Schwartze will serve on LAFCO until a new member is chosen to replace him.

LAFCO is made up of two county supervisors, two city council members and one public representative. Members from the cities are chosen by the Orange County City Select Committee--consisting of the county’s 27 mayors--which is scheduled to meet on June 9.

Other members are chairman Donald A. Holt, a former Placentia councilman who is the public member, Newport Beach City Councilwoman Evelyn Hart and county supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Don R. Roth. Vasquez and Roth replaced Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, who resigned from LAFCO in November, and Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who left two months later.