Talk of a Compromise Raised : Money Beat Measure A, Foes, Supporters Agree

In the end, it all came down to money.

The nearly $2 million spent by opponents of Orange County’s slow-growth initiative was the major factor in the measure’s 55.7% to 44.3% defeat Tuesday, both sides agreed. But as the dust began to settle Wednesday after a long, divisive campaign, backers and opponents started assessing the future of slow growth in Orange County.

Supporters of Measure A said they will continue to press for growth control, but they acknowledged that the defeat will weaken future attempts to get initiatives approved by voters.

Opponents said they may be willing to consider a compromise on a future slow-growth initiative that would regulate development, but they would like to see a tax increase accompany it.

And both sides are watching the Board of Supervisors. With the initiative dead, the battle over slow growth now shifts to a committee, appointed by the supervisors, that is trying to devise tighter controls on growth acceptable to both sides.

The supervisors said Wednesday that they are committed to adopting the initiative’s major feature, which links new development to acceptable levels of traffic.

Said Supervisor Don R. Roth: “I think there’s a signal out there that the natives are restless and we have to do a good job of controlling growth and providing transportation.”

Added Harriett M. Wieder, chairman of the supervisors: “I will make it my business to see that the county addresses the purpose of the initiative. That’s the bottom line.”

Tom Rogers, a San Juan Capistrano rancher and one of the founders of the group that drafted the initiative, was philosophical.

“The blame for this rests right on the leadership--me,” Rogers observed Wednesday.

He said he was surprised by the amount of money raised by the building industry to get across to voters its point that the initiative would make traffic worse.

Rogers said he would have “gone and borrowed the money” for mailing two pamphlets countywide if he had foreseen the extent of the campaign against the initiative.

He credited the opposition’s advertising as the single most important factor in turning public sentiment against the initiative. Specifically, he singled out the use of paid telephone workers who told voters the initiative would lead to a tax increase of $1,800 per house--an outright falsehood, according to county officials.

Political experts agreed that the slow-growth campaign was seriously flawed.

“The supporters failed to run a traditional kind of campaign which you either go door to door or reach people through the mail or through other means,” said UC Irvine Prof. Mark Baldassare.

He had conducted pre-election polls for the Orange County Edition of The Times that showed the early strong support for the initiative waning as the opposition pressed its well-financed publicity blitz.

“The real problem in the last month was that (supporters) were not able to reach people after they were bombarded with information against the initiative,” Baldassare said.

Spokesmen for building industry, which collected most of the $1.8 million to oppose Measure A, said they feared that voters would be turned off by the huge amount raised.

“We found out that voters don’t care who gives them the message if it’s the right message,” said John R. Simon, a Newport Beach lawyer and chairman of the main group opposing the initiative, Citizens for Traffic Solutions.

Said Peter Ochs, president of the Fieldstone Co., a Newport Beach home builder, whom Simon described as a close adviser: “The industry spent some time agonizing over what to do, because they didn’t want to antagonize voters. But then they decided no one would get the message out if we didn’t.”

And with the overwhelming victory, opponents said they would be more likely to mount a massive campaign again and that developers would be less sensitive to being linked to such campaigns.

“We’ve shown that there will be strong financial opposition to these types of initiatives in the future,” Simon said.

But slow-growth leaders vowed to continue their fight and close observers believed that the public was still interested.

“The anti-development sentiment is still there,” said Harvey Englander, a veteran local political consultant.

“Tuesday’s vote was just not that strong a mandate for the opponents,” Englander declared. “The voters are saying, ‘We’re concerned about losing growth, but you’d better fix the traffic problem.”’

A stoic Rogers said the slow-growth movement will continue to grow.

“Traffic is only going to get worse from here on out,” he said. “People will be even angrier than they are now. We’re back at Point A when we first started on the initiative two years ago, with a bitterly divided community.”

Rogers said his group will have to reasses its tactics. He said supporters should probably focus their attention next on a campaign for similar measures in Orange County’s cities, noting that such initiatives fared better Tuesday in San Clemente and Seal Beach.

But initiative opponents said the slow-growth movement was weakened significantly by the defeat of the measure and added that if a countywide initiative surfaces again, it would have to be a compromise that combines tight controls on development with a tax increase or some other way of raising money for highway construction, a goal sought by developers.

Simon endorses such a plan.

“We don’t want to go on forever and forever with these kind of fights,” Simon said Wednesday. “There’s been a lot of thought about this, and if it takes some kind of initiative to put this thing to bed, well OK.”

Both sides agreed that a compromise initiative would have to contain traffic and growth controls if it were to include a tax increase. Otherwise, it would be a repeat of the 1984 election when county voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed sales tax of a penny per dollar for transportation projects, which was favored by developers.

So some people who might grudgingly favor a compromise proposal--like Simon--are dubious about its prospects for success.

After all, the 1984 measure was defeated easily.

Russ Burkett, a key supporter of the slow-growth initiative, denied that this time around, initiative supporters assumed they would win because they successfully campaigned against the developers and the proposed sales tax four years ago with little money.

“It was much easier to get people to vote against a tax hike than to convince them to vote in favor of an initiative, and we knew that,” Burkett explained.

In March, county supervisors appointed an ad-hoc citizens advisory committee to write a backup, or “safety-net,” growth-management plan to take effect if the slow-growth initiative failed at the polls or in court.

Slow-growth activists had feared that Measure A’s defeat would result in its abandonment.

But the 11-member panel met to continue its work Wednesday afternoon, just hours after the electorate had turned down Meaure A.

“Everybody here made a commitment to do a job, and that job is develop a growth-management plan,” said former Supervisor Bruce Nestande, the committee’s chairman. “We are working very hard to integrate the initiative into the plan.”

The committee has already sent to the supervisors a set of proposed traffic standards similar to those contained in the initiative. Still to come are standards for flood-control and public-safety services.

Panel members concluded Wednesday that revenues will be needed to finance improvements required by the growth-management plan but could not agree on whether to recommend a local sales tax. The issue will be taken up again later.

“I think the direction from the board at this point is that the board follows through on its promise,” said Supervisor Roger R. Stanton. “I think people are going to have a renewed faith in the board as we proceed to implement our own plan.”

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley was not available for comment Wednesday.

Roth, Wieder and Stanton said they did not see the vote as an endorsement of the leadership provided by the supervisors. “I think the only message is that the people are divided,” Stanton said.

Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said, however, that he believes there was a positive message for the supervisors in the voters’ rejection of the slow-growth measure.

“It’s nice to have the confidence of the constituents,” he said. “It is a message by the voters that elected officials should be . . . responsible for land-use decisions in the county.”

The supervisors also said that the experience of the slow-growth debate has assured that development and traffic will continue to be the county’s primary focus. Transportation will be a problem for years, they said, and if it is not managed correctly, there will be another emotional clash with the community.

Said Vasquez: “One clear message coming out of this whole scenario is that it is never going to be business as usual again.”

Times staff writer Dave Lesher contributed to this report.