MALIBU WATCH : Arrogance Undone

The sunsets over the ocean looked just a bit rosier from Malibu last week.

After more than three years of determined effort, the coastal community has finally won its independence as a separate city.

To local activists, it may have seemed that winning the June cityhood election was the easy part. For the last eight months, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, with spectacular disregard for the expressed will of Malibu residents, delayed the date of incorporation while it tried to ram through a larger sewer system than many in the community wanted.

But on Tuesday, bowing to growing public outrage, the supervisors waved the white flag, voting 5 to 0 to permit Malibu’s formal incorporation on March 28 as the county’s 87th city.

However, formal incorporation should not end the Malibu affair. The county’s actions were so egregious that the bad taste lingers. Last year, when thwarted by the board, cityhood activists introduced a bill in the state Legislature that would have forced the supervisors to allow Malibu’s incorporation next month. The board’s capitulation moots this provision but not others.

The legislation would also ensure the speedy incorporation of any future city following a valid public vote. And it would grant Malibu a one-time waiver to recoup the property-tax revenues for the coming fiscal year that it would have received had the county permitted the new city to incorporate last year.

The Legislature and Gov. Wilson should enact this bill, making the lesson of Malibu “never again.”