Slow-Growth Rulings a Blessing in Disguise

For the second time in recent months, an Orange County Superior Court judge has set aside a slow-growth initiative because it failed to pass legal muster.

This time Judge William F. McDonald ruled last Tuesday that the slow-growth Measure X, which was narrowly approved by voters in San Juan Capistrano last November, is unconstitutional. The court noted that the measure placed an unfair burden on builders by requiring them not only to solve traffic, public works and safety problems that their new developments might create, but to also correct existing problems that were caused by someone else.

Last October, Superior Court Judge John C. Woolley made the same ruling in a similar case challenging an initiative approved by San Clemente voters last June.

Many observers believe that it is just a matter of time before a similar growth-control measure passed by Costa Mesa voters last November is taken to court.

The legal setbacks are not surprising. In addition to taking an inequitable approach that would burden developers with problems not of their own making, initiatives like the countywide Measure A rejected by voters last June were confusing, poorly draw documents that would have created as many problems as they sought to solve.

One positive aspect of the legal rulings is that after two defeats in the courts, leaders of the slow-growth initiative drives finally seem ready to take a different tack. They are now talking of shifting efforts and possibly mounting legal challenges to specific projects, as they did earlier this month in defeating the Cypress Downs development on the Los Alamitos Race Course grounds and the Home Ranch project in Costa Mesa last November.

Zeroing in on particular developments that local residents consider to be environmentally undesirable is an approach much to be preferred over shotgun attacks on all development. Aside from the constitutional problems involved, the initiative process is too inflexible, costly and time-consuming to use to control land-use.

For example, using the initiative would lock local officials into the language initially approved by voters. Any subsequent changes needed to make the initiative or a development plan workable would then require putting the issue back on the ballot for another election.

Growth and development must be properly planned. Developers must be held accountable to the community and to residents who are frustrated by increased traffic congestion and other environmental losses that irresponsible growth produces. That accountability frequently takes the shape these days of developer agreements that require builders to offset the overload on public works that their projects cause. Such guarantees must be part of any project approval.

But it should be understood that developers do not pick up the entire bill. The cost for those public works is passed on to new home buyers. The added fees only further inflate housing costs, forcing more people working here to live elsewhere, adding to the already crucial traffic problem. It is a vicious cycle that no one city can adequately resolve. That is why the court rejections of ill-conceived slow-growth initiatives are a blessing in disguise. Maybe now local officials, supported by residents and slow-growth advocates, will begin taking a regional approach to the problems.