County Eases Back on Bill to Protect Pacts With Builders

Averting a confrontation with environmentalists, Orange County officials on Wednesday acceded to watered down legislation that could have significantly strengthened the ability of developers to lock their building plans in place years before beginning construction.

The county, pushing legislation authored by Assemblyman Dennis Brown (R-Los Alamitos), agreed to amendments that would leave intact the right of citizens to challenge zoning changes and other building approvals, even if they stem from “development agreements” meant to give builders prior approval for long-term projects.

The county’s bill, as it was approved 7 to 0 by the Assembly Local Government Committee, would prohibit court challenges to development agreements 120 days after the agreements are approved by city councils or county boards of supervisors. The measure, which would take effect Jan. 1, 1990, also would give opponents 120 days to challenge any agreement approved before the bill was enacted.

Protecting Agreements

However, the bill would not affect challenges to later government actions implementing development agreements, increasingly popular long-term pacts under which governments grant development rights in exchange for a builder’s agreement to finance public works projects, such as roads and sewers.

The bill is meant to protect developer agreements approved by Orange County in recent years which cover the construction of about 60,000 new housing units during the next 20 years. Without the bill, a county lobbyist and Assemblyman Brown argued, the agreements could be subject to challenges for 4 years or more.

“With the major financial commitments made by developers and builders, a four-year statute of limitations would have severe financial consequences,” Brown told the committee.

Paula Carrell, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, said the environmental organization is not opposed to a statute of limitations as long as it does not restrict the right of citizens to challenge environmental impact reports, zoning changes or other parts of the approval process.

“I think we can live with it,” Carrell said of the bill, which now moves to the Assembly floor.

“I do think it is going to put some constraints on our ability to unravel what’s in these agreements,” Carrell said. “But we do acknowledge that some sort of statute of limitations was within the realm of reason.”