Wieder Calls Off Plan to Join Growth Study Panel

Harriett M. Wieder on Sunday dropped her plan to add three Orange County supervisors, including herself, to a citizens’ committee on growth control.

“This was all a big misunderstanding,” said Wieder, the chairman of the board, after she held a three-hour meeting Sunday morning at her home with several members of the ad hoc Advisory Committee on Public Facilities.

At the meeting, it was agreed that the county supervisors will become non-voting, ex officio members after the committee submits its report in about two weeks.

The misunderstanding, Wieder said, occurred Friday when she spoke to some committee members. Her intent, she said, was to help define the board’s role with the citizens’ committee following the defeat of Measure A.

The committee is a citizen group appointed to write a backup, or “safety net,” growth control plan to take effect if the Citizens’ Sensible Growth and Traffic Control Initiative, also known as Measure A, was defeated at the polls or in court.

Viewed as Devious

Measure A was defeated by almost 56% to 44% in Tuesday’s election.

Wieder’s suggestion that she and Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Thomas F. Riley join the panel was viewed as an effort to water down the committee’s effort or to take credit for its work in order to sidestep the recall campaign that slow-growth activists are waging against her and Riley.

Slow-growth advocate Tom Rogers, chairman of the group that drafted Measure A, said he felt that Wieder’s idea would “emasculate” the committee’s work and “frustrate the wishes of the people in the county.”

Several committee members had threatened to quit the committee.

Rogers, one of the leaders of the recall effort, said during an interview Sunday that Wieder’s plan was an extremely poor and “foolishly conceived” effort to gain control of the committee.

“Her intent was clear. She wanted to come down and take over the committee. No equivocation on that. (But) once she felt that she overstepped the legal and political boundaries of this, she backed out,” Rogers said.

But Wieder disagreed.

“My intent was to discuss the board’s relationship with the committee,” she said Sunday. “I started that committee back in March before any recall effort was under way.”

“There needs to be a closer working relationship once the committee’s final plan is finished and it comes to (the board). One of the things that I wanted to address with the committee members was whether the chairman should assume the responsibility to show leadership.

“We were in the process of defining the board’s responsibility, that’s all. It was a demonstration of the interest and concern of the public officials, and it seems there needs to be a coming together,” Wieder said.

Wieder’s explanation, however, later brought a round of laughter from Rogers.

“(Wieder’s actions) show what tremendous pressure the supervisors are under with the developers on one side and the public on the other,” he said. “It shows the board’s disarray and, by her actions, it shows they don’t know how to respond to it.”

Nestande the Chairman

Robert Bennyhoff and Norm Grossman, who are on the committee and who attended Sunday’s meeting at the supervisor’s home, said the committee’s chairman, Bruce Nestande, will remain in that position. Under Wieder’s plan, she would have taken over as chairwoman June 21.

“We met with Harriett, and I think it was agreed there had been a misunderstanding and the committee would proceed with its work as scheduled without having any board members on it,” Bennyhoff said.

Wieder told committee members during the meeting that she did not intend “to take over” the committee’s work in progress, they said.

“If you want my personal opinion, when I heard about her plan on Saturday, I opposed it right away,” Bennyhoff said.

But the board was invited to attend the committee’s study sessions as ex-officio members, Grossman said. “In fact, we’re encouraging them to participate,” Grossman said.

Ron Greek, an insurance agent who also attended Sunday’s meeting, said it was mutually agreed the committee “should continue in its present format without any changes.”

Once the committee’s report is submitted, the supervisors “will work directly with the committee as non-voting ex officio members” to decide how to implement the plan and “ensure the broadest-based public support,” Greek said.

As a result, Wieder said she plans to attend the committee’s next meeting on Thursday.