‘No’ on Curtis Recall

Barely 2 years old, Mission Viejo is one of Orange County’s newest cities. Politically, its residents are inexperienced, perhaps even naive. But there is something cunning and bothersome about the recall election that, thankfully, concludes with Tuesday’s vote.

It is, first of all, a clear misuse of the recall process, which ought to be reserved for officeholders who are accused of malfeasance. Nothing of the sort is claimed in this instance. The target of the recall, Councilman Robert A. Curtis, is accused of wasting the city’s time and resources on his own agenda, of lying and of playing political games.

Curtis has a reputation for being pesky and arrogant, but those hardly are qualifications to make him the subject of a recall effort bankrolled by developers to the tune of $470,000. Most of that money has come from the Mission Viejo Co., which built the model city and doesn’t want anything to interfere with its completion exactly as planned.

There is a citizens’ group organizing the recall, which is only too happy to have the Mission Viejo Co. money for its effort. But the huge amounts of cash--12 times what Curtis has raised to defend himself--skews the political process in a way that should be seen by residents as manipulative and cynical.

That is not to say that Curtis is without faults. He has been preoccupied with the idea of having the city annex the nearby community of Aegean Hills, a plan apparently favored in Aegean Hills but opposed by a majority of the City Council. There may be something to the assertion of critics that he wants the annexation for personal reasons; he lived there before Mission Viejo became a city, and his political ambitions could be tied to receiving support from Aegean Hills. And he has disrupted city meetings with his grandstanding style.

But it is important to remember that Curtis represents only one vote on the five-member council. He has virtually no power to accomplish his agenda, no matter how many times he tries.

As for charges that he has wasted city money in the Aegean Hills annexation effort and in other ways, the city ought to be able to protect itself from the whims of a maverick councilman in ways that are less drastic than a costly, rancorous and time-consuming recall election. Other cities have learned how to do this, and Mission Viejo can too.

The Mission Viejo recall falls into another category, one increasingly seen in California and one that marks an alarming trend. It is when a development firm heavily finances a recall attempt of someone who opposes its plans for the community. The citizens of Mission Viejo, even those who dislike Curtis, should reject the Mission Viejo Co.’s efforts to interfere in city politics by voting “no” to the Curtis recall.

Clearly there is a lot of acrimony in Mission Viejo, and Curtis has been the lightning rod for much of it. But there is a time-tested mechanism for removing politicians with whom residents are unhappy. It’s called an election. By mounting this recall, the proponents are doing just what they accuse Curtis of doing: wasting Mission Viejo citizens’ time, energy and money.