County Is Trying to Charge Malibu for Cityhood Wrangle : Politics: Sewer assessment district is being billed for legal fees run up in the effort to delay incorporation.

In the few weeks before Malibu finally becomes a city, Los Angeles County is attempting to shift to residents of the seaside community the legal bills the county ran up in its effort to thwart the incorporation.

Documents obtained by The Times show that the county incurred more than $500,000 in legal and lobbying expenses in its quest to start work on a controversial sewer system while using legal maneuvers to delay Malibu’s incorporation. Malibu will become a city March 28, almost 10 months after voters, stirred by opposition to the county’s sewer plans, overwhelmingly approved cityhood.

According to the documents, $256,000 of the legal expenses were directly related to the county’s effort to delay incorporation. These expenses, along with a comparable amount spent on the sewer project, are all being charged to the assessment district the county set up in Malibu to pay for the sewer system.

Also being billed to the assessment district are about $60,000 in fees paid to lobbyists hired by the county to push the project before the California Coastal Commission and other agencies.

Malibu civic leaders, angry that the county has spent more than $6 million and is committed to another $2.4 million to help pay for a sewer system that most residents believe is too big and too expensive, expressed outrage upon learning of the county’s intention.

“I’m absolutely stunned that they would try to charge Malibu citizens for trying to gain their freedom,” Councilman-elect Mike Caggiano said. “This is a little like Saddam Hussein trying to charge the POWs a bed tax.”

County officials defended the handling of the legal fees and other costs, saying they were necessary to protect the sewer project.

“How to deal with the legal fees wasn’t a difficult decision to make,” Assistant County Counsel Bill Pellman said. “It isn’t reasonable to expect the rest of county taxpayers to foot the bill for Malibu’s trying to avoid a sewer.”

Malibu’s leaders, meanwhile, said the county’s tactic comes as a setback at a time when their relations with the county had appeared to be improving. Officials of the future city recently began contract negotiations with the Sheriff’s Department and other county agencies to provide services once the city is independent.

“I think it’s a real atrocity,” Mayor-elect Walt Keller said. “It gives the lie to all the county’s pronouncements about mutual cooperation in trying to solve the sewer issue.

“I think they’re just inviting another lawsuit with something like this,” he said.

The Coastal Commission approved the county’s sewer plans in principle in 1989, and authorized the county to set up the assessment district to pay for it. But in the face of widespread community opposition that fueled last year’s incorporation campaign, the state panel has yet to allow construction to begin.

Although the matter is on the Coastal Commission’s agenda in April, the commissioners, irritated by the county’s tactics in delaying cityhood, have hinted strongly that they will not approve a sewer system unless Malibu’s leaders have a say in the matter.

The county has long argued that a sewer system is necessary, citing pollution caused by leaking septic tanks as a public health threat. Opponents, including all five members of Malibu’s slow-growth-oriented City Council-elect, contend that the county’s proposal would foster widespread development.

The county paid the law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, represented chiefly by attorney Elwood Lui, $256,000 to represent it in its long legal battle with cityhood boosters over Malibu’s efforts to become a city.

Under a court order, the supervisors--with Supervisor Ed Edelman dissenting--last March allowed the cityhood election to go forward last June, but delayed the actual incorporation until March 28 of this year in hopes of starting construction on the sewer before a new city government had the chance to block it. The action triggered several lawsuits by cityhood backers.

Last month, a Superior Court judge ordered the county to pay $35,000 in legal fees incurred by lawyers for cityhood supporters in one of the lawsuits.

Pellman, the assistant county counsel, said that the county intends to add the $35,000 to the other costs the assessment district property owners will be expected to pay.

“Talk about adding insult to injury, they’re just flipping the same attorneys’ fees the judge said they had to pay back on a lot of the same people who challenged them in the first place,” Mayor-elect Keller said. “That, to me, is beyond outrageous.”

Other legal expenses incurred by the county in connection with the sewer project include $155,000 in legal services provided by the county’s own lawyers, and $64,000 paid to the Los Angeles firm of O’Melveny & Myers to represent the county before the Coastal Commission and other agencies. This money, too, has been billed to the assessment district.