County’s Appeal Fees Are Too High, Unfair

County officials made it clear last Wednesday that anyone seeking to appeal a county Planning Commission decision must first put money, lots of it, on the line.

The controversy arose when Sherry Meddick, who heads a local environmental group, decided to appeal commission approval of a residential development project that would allow destruction of hundreds of large oak trees. But Meddick didn’t have the $1,700 fee that the county now requires to be deposited with the appeal. The fee was raised about three-fold by the supervisors last summer as part of its policy of recovering county costs for services.

Meddick asked that the fee be waived by the Environmental Management Agency or that Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, in whose district the development is to take place, bring the appeal before the county board for her. Both requests were rejected.

The EMA refused to accept her appeal without the fee. Its director said the only criterion used in setting the fee was what processing the appeal would cost the county.

Vasquez defended his decision and the county’s cost-recovery policy, saying that to deviate from it would mean that “ . . . the rest of the taxpayers in Orange County are subsidizing someone else.”

The equity argument is misguided. It is poor public policy and unfair. The question is not subsidy but access to the system. If provision is not made for people who cannot afford exorbitant fees to receive the county services that should be available, somehow, to everyone, then only the rich public is served.

Other comparable counties are much more committed to keeping similar appeal fees within financial reach. The appeal fee in San Diego County is $300. In Los Angeles it depends on transcript tape footage but can be as low as $100. Why then should it be $1,700 in Orange County? Is its bureaucracy so inefficient that its actual costs are that much more?

Residents with legitimate protests should be able to challenge county Planning Commission decisions. We understand the county’s revenue problems and support the user-fee approach. But those fees must be kept realistic. And affordable. Residents must not be priced out of receiving service that government has an obligation to provide.