REGIONAL REPORT : 25 Years Later, SCAG Is Still a ‘Toothless Tiger’ : Government: Critics say the six-county agency lacks the power to tackle transportation and pollution problems. Supporters claim it is the best hope at regional planning.

The mood was anything but celebratory recently at the 25th anniversary conference of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the Southland’s only overall regional planning council.

“It’s just not prestigious to be part of this organization,” said Laguna Beach City Councilman Robert Gentry.

“Very, very few city officials even understand what SCAG does,” said Monrovia Mayor Robert Bartlett. “They have been put off by colleagues telling them what SCAG is about to do to us rather than for us.”

These should be heady days for the six-county planning agency. For the first time in years, politicians in Sacramento appear seriously interested in a more regional approach to the escalating pollution and congestion threatening to choke the Southern California lifestyle.

As one of his first acts in office, Gov. Pete Wilson--declaring that many of the state’s most pressing problems cross municipal and county lines--appointed a Growth Management Council to prepare plans for coping with troubles brought on by population growth.

In addition, four regional governance bills are in various stages in the Legislature--including one backed by the state’s most powerful Democrat, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

But heady feelings are evident nowhere.

None of the bills assure a strong future for SCAG, and even the agency’s members, fearful of the loss of local control, appear queasy about the prospect of gaining more power.

Furthermore, in recent years, SCAG has been boycotted by about 20% of its potential 180 city and county government members--and more are talking about dropping out.

Last week, Ventura County officials and representatives of 10 cities within the county agreed to form their own regional council of governments--a likely first step toward leaving SCAG.

Even some of SCAG’s strongest boosters acknowledge that the organization stands as an example of how after a quarter-century, regional governance remains an elusive goal.

SCAG was set up mainly as a defensive measure to combat a state law establishing autonomous planning districts in regions of the state lacking their own. Since then, SCAG, which has 95 employees, has gathered demographic statistics, generated regional transportation, housing and air quality plans, and identified likely sites for airports, rail lines and waste facilities.

But it has had virtually no power to implement changes. At last month’s annual conference, 250 municipal and county officials who serve as delegates to SCAG again made clear that they oppose the agency gaining regulatory powers.

First, the General Assembly delegates voted overwhelmingly to oppose Speaker Brown’s proposal that SCAG, or a new organization like it, would serve as a regional super-agency with broad powers to overrule local land-use decisions.

Then, they approved a set of principles stating that “regional policy reform should not create another layer of government which usurps the power of local elected officials.”

Riverside County Supervisor A. Norton Younglove, who has participated in SCAG activities since the 1960s, said the resistance to regional governance is age-old.

“California is regionally organized quite poorly. I’d say organized chaos, except it’s not that organized,” Younglove said after the SCAG assembly’s vote. He also serves as chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District board. “SCAG’s biggest accomplishment is just continuing to exist. It was and is a toothless tiger.”

For years, many of Orange County’s largest cities, including Fullerton and Anaheim, have boycotted SCAG, largely on philosophical grounds.

Camarillo City Manager Bill Little said the Ventura County communities established their single-county council because “we think that SCAG serves too big an area. In Ventura County, the philosophy is that urban growth should occur in cities and not sprawl across the landscape. In (other Southland counties), that whole philosophy is not there.”

Former SCAG President Christine Reed believes that mandatory membership is the only means of making SCAG, or a similar agency, work.

“If the Legislature truly intends to address regional coordination, they are going to have to force people to participate because you cannot address regional problems around the boundaries of some isolationist cities,” said Reed, who was forced to step down as president when she lost her bid for reelection to the Santa Monica City Council last November.

So what does SCAG have to show for its 25 years? In large part, a stack of plans and statistics, some of which have been praised for their innovation and accuracy.

SCAG’s regional growth management plan has given government and business leaders their only set of thorough regional population forecasts to help make decisions for siting highways, housing developments, industrial parks and other major facilities.

SCAG’s planning efforts have also given it a modicum of power in such fields as regional transportation. Freeway and rail projects that are not included in SCAG’s long-term transportation plan do not qualify for federal highway funds. But the agency’s power is largely limited to saying no.

When SCAG seeks to take the initiative, the efforts have generally resulted in failure.

Ten years ago, SCAG selected three potential sites for a new regional airport--El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, near Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, or on man-made platforms offshore of the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbors.

Each site was protested by residents concerned with the impact of noise, traffic and urbanization. Because SCAG has no implementation powers, the project has gone nowhere.

Since the 1960s, the Legislature has established several single-issue Southern California regional agencies that do have regulatory powers, among them AQMD, which can force local governments to comply with clean air standards.

Despite its limited powers, SCAG, whose $11-million budget is largely funded by the federal government, remains the only Southland agency with the mission to take an overall approach to the region’s problems.

“In the last 14 years, we’ve grown from 10.5 million people to 15 million people,” said SCAG’s executive director Mark Pisano. “We’ve added about 20 cities in the last 10 years and the economic product has more than doubled from $170 billion to almost $400 billion.

“As an economic unit, (Southern California) is just an incredibly important force in the United States and in the world. . . . No one else says how do we organize it and make it work and what does it want to become and where is it going and what does it need. We’re really the only agency doing that.”

With the state’s growth management problems headed toward the boiling point in the Southland and beyond, experts predict that one of the Sacramento plans for regional governance will likely reach a final vote by early 1992.

Speaker Brown’s bill would have SCAG, or a new organization like it, serve as a regional super-agency, having broad powers to overrule local land-use decisions.

Assemblyman Sam Farr’s (D-Carmel) legislation would create a state planning office and require regional agencies, including SCAG, to adopt more detailed and comprehensive plans than they do now.

State Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) would require regional agencies, including SCAG, to coordinate plans for housing, transportation and air quality into a single comprehensive plan. Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) would allow local governments to voluntarily create regional bodies to finance public works projects by levying property transfer taxes.

Whatever plan Wilson backs is likely to do little to tamper with local control. Rather, it will emphasize local decision-making in order “to help local governments work together better,” said State Office of Planning and Research director Richard P. Sybert, giving the keynote address at the SCAG conference.

“People can see in their daily lives the greater traffic congestion, you have a five-year drought . . . and a federal and state budget crisis,” said Sybert, who chairs Wilson’s Growth Management Council. “There is a consensus that something has to change.

“I’m pretty confident,” he concluded, “that next year you’ll see some significant growth-related legislation emerge.”

BACKGROUND

The Southern California Assn. of Governments (SCAG) is a voluntary planning council composed of mayors, City Council members and county supervisors from city and county governments in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange and Imperial counties. Founded in the mid-1960s, SCAG collects statistics and prepares regional plans in the fields of transportation, air and water quality, housing needs and growth management. Unlike such single-issue authorities as the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Los Angeles-headquartered agency has little power to implement its plans.