Development, Flood Control on Agenda of Legislators

After a relatively quiet 1988, Orange County’s legislative agenda for the coming year looks more ambitious, with county officials intending to seek new state laws in the areas of real estate development, flood control, juvenile offenders and regional transportation planning.

The county also will be seeking a budget boost for the Orangewood Children’s Home and legislation giving police more power to arrest suspected wife-beaters.

The item holding the most potential for controversy may be a proposal to limit challenges to county-approved agreements with developers so that large-scale commercial and residential projects can go forward without the threat of lawsuits.

This would be accomplished by enacting a statute of limitations for lawsuits challenging development agreements that would give opponents only 90 days to go to court to overturn these long-term compacts between government and builders. A development agreement usually specifies the size and type of project that can be built and binds the developer to build certain public facilities, such as roads, parks and sewers.

Time Limits Sought

Current law is unclear on how much time must elapse before it is no longer possible to challenge such an agreement in court, county officials say. This uncertainty, they say, is making financial backers jittery about investing the huge amounts of money needed to pay for the public facilities they are bound to provide.

“The lack of a statute of limitations always throws into question when, or if ever, someone is going to challenge a development agreement,” said Richard Keefe, director of legislative affairs for the county. “This can impact the selling of bonds and the building of the public benefits that these agreements require.”

Paula Carrell, Sacramento lobbyist for the Sierra Club, said she will have to study the county’s proposal before taking a position on it. But she said she is skeptical of any plan to weaken the ability of citizens to challenge their governments’ approval of development.

“I’d have to know whether there is any justification for this,” Carrell said. “Development agreements are already so protective of the developers.”

Carrell also questioned the need for another county proposal affecting environmental law. This one would give the county more freedom to maintain flood control channels without oversight from the state Fish and Game Department.

The problem, according to Keefe, is that when weeds grow in a channel, animals often follow, using the new habitat as a home. To clear the weeds, he said, requires a permit from state fish and game officials.

“That’s absolutely contrary to the whole purpose of having the channel to begin with,” Keefe said. “If you build a channel to control floods, you should be able to maintain it to control floods.”

But Carrell said the scarcity of wildlife habitat in concrete-filled Southern California might be reason enough for a review by state officials of any decision to destroy animals’ homes, even those fashioned from structures built by humans.

Merits Assessment

“There is precious little area in Southern California for wildlife habitat,” she said. “Where some occurs, it needs to receive appropriate protection. It doesn’t mean the flood control channel ought not be cleaned out, but if wildlife habitat has emerged and is significant, that merits some assessment.”

On another front, the county is planning to seek at least two pieces of legislation concerning juveniles. One would establish a five-county model program for handling seriously emotionally disturbed children who, because of wrongdoing, are in the custody of the County Probation Department.

“These children require considerable amounts of one-on-one supervision,” Keefe said. “They do not receive the kind of mental-health treatment they should receive.” As a result, he said, they disrupt Juvenile Hall and camps for juvenile offenders, interfering with the county’s ability to work with other young inmates.

The county’s proposed solution is to join with Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties to build a separate facility for these children. The 50-bed juvenile center, for youths between the ages of 12 and 18, would cost about $3.5 million a year to operate. The counties would pay part of that amount, and the state would pick up the rest.

“These children would then be receiving the mental health therapy they should be receiving, as well as serving the time they have to serve because of the laws they have broken,” Keefe said.

Separated From Parents

The other children’s proposal involves youths who have been separated or removed from their parents and are being cared for at the Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange.

Under current law, the state indefinitely pays for part of the care of children who are sheltered in foster homes or group centers operated by private agencies under contract with the government. But if a child is sheltered in a county-run home such as Orangewood, the state shares the financial burden for only 30 days in any 12-month period.

“Counties must either assume this cost,” said a county report on the subject, “or yield to the fiscal advantage of making premature placements into foster care . . . with the increased likelihood of inappropriate foster placements failing, causing further emotional trauma to the child and damaging the partnership relationship with foster parents and/or group home operators.”

Two other legislative proposals for 1989, in the county’s view, would help law enforcement authorities crack down on domestic violence.

One would allow police to arrest someone suspected of abusing a family member even if the abuse occurred before the police arrived and the victim was not willing to file a complaint. Current law allows police to make a misdemeanor arrest without a warrant only when the crime is committed in the presence of an officer.

Less Burden for Victim

The county’s Commission on the Status of Women believes that the proposed change would relieve from the victim the burden of having to make the decision on whether to proceed with an arrest. It could also relieve the victim of responsibility for the arrest in the eyes of the assailant, possibly preventing retaliation.

The other law enforcement proposal would require those accused of domestic violence to plead guilty before entering diversion programs for counseling. Commission members believe this would help solve the problem caused by people who beat their spouses, enter diversion programs to escape prosecution, and then quit before the counseling is complete.

“If they successfully complete the program, charges are dropped,” Keefe said. “If they don’t complete the program, the only way the prosecutor can get a conviction is if the abused person is willing to testify. But by then, tempers have usually cooled, and it isn’t possible to have the victim come in and testify, so the charges are dropped.”

The Orange County Transportation Commission, a backer of toll-road legislation that has been a major focus of the county’s efforts in Sacramento during the past 2 years, may have two more transportation planning issues ready for legislative action in 1989. Like the toll-road legislation, these measures would be aimed at expediting freeway construction so that new roads will not be immediately overwhelmed by the increasing numbers of county commuters.

One proposal, which was tried and defeated a year ago, is to pull Orange County out of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, a Los Angeles-dominated regional planning body that many county officials believe no longer reflects the interests of Orange County.

More Freedom for County

Stan Oftelie, director of the County Transportation Commission, said his agency favors an approach that would allow each county more freedom to plan its own transportation future, in conjunction with a regional agency that would coordinate those plans into a coherent whole.

“There is no question that there needs to be a regional view of Southern California, but Newport Beach ain’t no Victorville,” Oftelie said. “There are differences that need to be determined, and there should be more respect paid to those differences.”

But if Orange County does obtain transportation planning independence, who should do the planning? That question would be answered through a second piece of legislation, the content of which would depend on the outcome of a task force study due early this year.

The task force may recommend that the Transportation Commission, the Orange County Transit District and several lesser agencies be consolidated into one. If so, legislation would be needed to accomplish that streamlining.

Some officials believe that consolidation would save money, remove duplication and fix responsibility for transportation planning and management in one agency.

“There are issues as large as giving the county a single voice on transportation in Washington and Sacramento and as small as having one telephone number for the elderly and handicapped to call for a bus ride,” Oftelie said.