Growth Issue Shows Varied Vision of Feinstein, Wilson

As they campaign for the governorship of California, Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Republican Sen. Pete Wilson seem awed, if not downright overwhelmed, by the continued rapid growth of this nation-state and the power of its economy.

But as awed as they may be by California’s vastness, the candidates have pledged to do what no other California governor has done or even tried to do with any real success: Manage and channel the state’s growth so that it continues to be an asset--or at least an acceptable fact of life--rather than a runaway monster that threatens to destroy California’s cherished lifestyle.

The statistics are staggering.

With 20 million residents in 1970, California has grown to 30 million. Already the world’s sixth-largest economy and headed for fourth by the end of the century, California has more people than Canada and a more potent economy than all but a handful of the world’s nations.

California boosters have extolled and celebrated these facts as boosters have done since 1848. But there is fear that the same growth which fuels the economy will overwhelm the very amenities that have attracted so many millions.

Planners, local government officials and some business executives concerned by California’s deteriorating quality of life are encouraged that both candidates seem willing to tackle the growth problem and appear to have the management skills and experience that promise some success.

Both have been mayors of major California cities that suffered growth problems during their tenures--Wilson in San Diego and Feinstein in San Francisco. They have faced the dilemmas of choking traffic, landfills nearing capacity, dirty air, befouled waterways and unfilled needs such as parks, open space and affordable housing.

Yet their platforms differ sharply on how best to impose the controls, particularly on how far government should intrude in the planning process at the state, regional and local levels.

Feinstein has proposed creation of a California Growth Management Commission “to develop coherent state policies” that respond to runaway growth. These policies would be implemented by a series of regional commissions that would deal with problems that go beyond city and county borders, such as air and water quality and transportation.

“While this plan will leave most of the decision making in the hands of local citizens, these decisions will be made within a framework of statewide concerns and priorities,” she told the San Francisco Commonwealth Club recently.

Without identifying it as such, Feinstein’s program appears to be modeled after a plan put forward in the Legislature this year by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), a close Feinstein political ally. That followed a yearlong study by Brown’s Assembly Office of Research which concluded that the complex network of regional and local governments in California no longer were institutionally or politically capable of dealing with growth.

Wilson attacked the Feinstein-Brown approach in a recent Los Angeles speech to the California Assn. of Realtors, saying that the power of local government to make land-use decisions must be preserved.

“I do not think it is wise to say that the state should be in the process of making local land-use decisions from Sacramento,” Wilson added. “That is a scheme that is bound to fail. . . . I would think that someone who had been a mayor would understand the necessity for cooperation and coordination, but not for usurpation by the state of what are in fact local functions.”

Wilson proposed to use the governor’s Office of Planning and Research to provide a coordinated attack on those problems that clearly reach beyond city and county boundary lines. Existing state law requires the Office of Planning and Research to review local land-use plans to make sure they conform to state requirements for low-income housing, transportation and other factors. The office has no authority to enforce the state rules, but Wilson said he would seek to increase its powers. “What we have determined is there is a need for rational planning to take place, and in some places to have rational management in a rather narrow and focused way to deal with a specific environmental problem,” he said.

Growth management is not exactly a sexy campaign issue, but Wilson and Feinstein agree it will be a major priority of their administrations.

In her speech to the Commonwealth Club, Feinstein declared that a meaningful plan to manage growth “is good for the environment, it’s good for business and it’s essential, I believe, to the future of the state of California.”

Wilson told the annual real estate agent convention that if growth is inevitable “we must choose to shape our growth rather than simply suffer.” In a campaign position paper, Wilson also labeled growth management as possibly “the single greatest environmental challenge in the 1990s.”

Feinstein likes to point to the Coastal Commission as an example of Wilson’s support for a state agency with veto powers over local government planning decisions.

In fact, the coastal planning program is a Wilson brainchild. He sponsored a bill as an assemblyman in the early 1970s to create such a commission. Passed by the Assembly, the bill narrowly failed after a rancorous debate in the state Senate. But the commission was approved by voters in an initiative.

Wilson argues that such a strong state role is justified only in special circumstances where a resource of statewide significance is threatened by development, such as California’s coast.

Wilson supports other single-purpose state agencies that attempt to manage environmental problems that transcend local boundaries, particularly those that affect air and water quality.

Among those are the state Air Resources Board, the regional air quality management districts, and the state Water Resources Control Board and its regional water quality control boards. A number of counties also have state-sanctioned transportation commissions that coordinate public transit systems, such as the Southern California Rapid Transit District. And most regions in the state have voluntary councils of governments, such as the Southern California Assn. of Governments, that have state authority to engage in broad planning for traffic management, hazardous waste disposal and other issues.

The Brown-Feinstein approach argues that the existing planning and management agencies are so fragmented and poorly coordinated--sometimes even competing with each other--that they cannot effectively cope with the array of problems facing entire regions of the state.

Feinstein said in a statement prepared for the California chapter of the American Planning Assn. that comprehensive new state and regional agencies are needed to achieve a better balance between job location and affordable housing, parks and recreational facilities, preservation of prime agricultural land threatened by development and to provide the public facilities needed to accommodate growth.

Brown’s bill would create multipurpose agencies that would replace the regional air and water quality boards, regional transportation agencies, local agency formation commissions, the councils of governments and a variety of special districts.

Not surprisingly, cities and counties have been the most vociferous opponents of a strong state planning role in California. But Thompson said Brown’s regional government bill has been amended to make it more acceptable to local officials. The plan has received the support of a number of individual cities and business and corporation executives, he said. Wilson derides any sort of centralized planning as the sort of thing that failed in Communist countries. Instead, he promotes the sort of “proven and innovative management skills” he sad he employed during 11 years as mayor of rapidly growing San Diego.

The Wilson position paper boasts that during those years of rapid growth the city was able to set aside parkland, save canyons from development and direct economic and population growth “not by shutting out business or by turning away newcomers and development, but by working with them.”

Wilson angered developers by channeling new housing and business projects into existing urban areas to avoid sprawl. Where possible, new development was kept contiguous to existing city or county development. Later in his tenure as mayor, critics contended Wilson became too lenient with the developers. Feinstein faced the same criticism in San Francisco.