Measure A Defeat Gives County a 2nd Chance

Neither the Orange County Board of Supervisors nor city councils and developers in the county can afford to misread the message that voters sent last Tuesday in rejecting the slow-growth initiative.

Measure A was confusing, poorly worded and deserved rejection. Its defeat, however, in no way means that residents like the way the county board, some city councils and land developers have been doing business with respect to new developments and the increased traffic they produce.

If the county board needs confirmation of that, it need only look at the votes given the three supervisors who were on the ballot. Board Chairman Harriett M. Wieder, in failing to win the Republican nomination in the 42nd Congressional District that covers parts of Orange and Los Angeles counties, couldn’t even carry her own county, getting less than 30% of the vote here.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, another board veteran who was running for reelection, did win. But his opponent, with considerably less money and name identification, drew 41% of the vote. The appointed board incumbent, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, did better, but still his virtually unknown, underfunded opponent received 35% of the vote. And Supervisors Thomas F. Riley and Wieder are facing recall over their approval of developer agreements.

The relatively poor showing of the supervisors is an obvious indication of the anti-board feeling confirmed in pre-election polls showing that many people hold the supervisors responsible for overdevelopment and many of the county’s traffic problems.

One inescapable postelection fact is that the failure of the initiative doesn’t eliminate the urgent need to improve traffic conditions throughout the county and control land development so that the quality of community life is not further sacrificed to irresponsible growth.

In assessing the convincing defeat of Measure A, some of the supervisors have been saying the right things: that they don’t see the “no” vote as an endorsement of their leadership, or a green light for “business as usual.”

Saying the right things does not mean much, however. The public has had enough lip service on the subject of growth management. What is needed now to restore public confidence and solve the county’s growth and transportation problems is for the board to vigorously pursue the goal of better-managed growth that all residents, no matter how they voted on the initiative, want.

That opportunity is available to the supervisors, developers and city councils in the ad-hoc citizens advisory committee appointed by the supervisors last March. The committee was told to write a “safety net” growth-management plan that could replace the slow-growth initiative if it failed at the polls or was invalidated in court.

The committee has already drafted the traffic-control sections that contain most of the provisions of Measure A in clearer and more workable language. It is now working on the flood-control and emergency-response requirements.

One other vital ingredient--affordable housing--must also be made part of the growth-management plan. Trade-offs, like higher densities and zoning changes that encourage residential construction in industrial areas, can help make the inclusion of affordable housing realistic in larger home-building projects.

What the builders and the county board must not be allowed to do is to reduce the proposed growth-management plan to a meaningless measure. There is already concern in the community that some less responsible builders will try to pressure the county Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors to water down the language of any Measure A-like law. Public officials, weak and accommodating in the past when it came to developers’ wishes, must resist any such pressures and not compromise the work of the citizens committee.

Concerns about weakening the work of the committee are well founded considering Wieder’s disclosure last Friday that she intends to add herself and Supervisors Vasquez and Riley to the committee when its final wording formally comes before the county board on June 21. She also said she planned to take over chairmanship of the committee from Bruce Nestande, a former board member who presently sits on the state Transportation Commission.

Adding the supervisors to the committee and taking over its chairmanship would be a mistake. The county board is the most suspect in the public’s mind when it comes to being pro-development and Wieder, Riley and Vasquez were on record as strongly opposing Measure A. Wieder has admitted that the committee is working well. Why then must it be expanded by adding supervisors whose membership would only raise legitimate public suspicions and jeopardize the acceptance of the committee’s work? And why should Wieder replace Nestande with herself when Nestande has shown strong, enthusiastic and wise leadership in trying to produce a strong growth management plan?

Wieder’s takeover attempt would be the wrong move at the wrong time.

The state and nation were watching Orange County on Election Day to see how it would vote on the initiative. The county is still being watched, to see how it reacts to the election results.

If public officials continue in their old ways, they surely will face other initiatives, referendums, lawsuits, recalls and removal from office. And justifiably so.

The ad-hoc committee is the best hope for the county and its 28 cities, for healing the rifts caused by the bitter Measure A campaign and for bringing all competing interests together to seek solutions that work-- and are acceptable to everyone. All factions are represented on the 11-member group. They have been sitting down together for weeks and have already shown that they can compromise on controversial points and reach agreement on controlling traffic and development. Now, it is time for local government to do the same.