<i> During 1990, many Orange County residents wrote about their thoughts and feelings in articles for Orange County opinion pages. As we look back on the year, some of those thoughts are recalled.</i> : Daniel H. Young on Governments Council

The state Legislature and the U.S. Congress have placed laws on the books demanding that local government use its land-use powers to clean up the air, fix the transportation mess and address a wide variety of other environmental ills.

The laws have sent state and federal regulators into action demanding results or threatening to take over local government’s all-important land-use power.

How Orange County and its 29 cities respond to this warning will decide whether or not local government can be effective in the 21st Century or whether it will pass into oblivion, replaced by now obscure regional bureaucracies.

What is urgently needed is a Council of Governments in Orange County (a confederation of cities and the county) that will see to it that our environemtnal problems will be dealt with but without losing local control.

If we move with council of governments legislation, the county and its cities can demonstrate the leadership necessary to prove that the big issues can be solved by local governments working cooperatively. Otherwise, the warning that local government faces today will become a cry for extinction tomorrow.