Nestande Quitting State’s Road Panel : Transportation: The former Orange County supervisor cites business demands and desire to avoid any conflict of interest. He served on the commission for 10 years.

Ending a decade on the state’s top transportation panel, former Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande said Wednesday that he will announce his resignation today from the California Transportation Commission.

Citing the press of business, Nestande said he is quitting effective June 30 “because the time is right” and he wants to avoid any potential conflicts of interest between his commission duties and his job as a consultant for various Orange County developers.

While working as vice president of government relations for Costa Mesa-based Arnel Development Co., Nestande has also been free-lancing as a consultant to the Irvine Co. and the Santa Margarita Co., among other clients, on air-quality issues.

“The status of the CTC work schedule and my personal business affairs dictate that it is now that time” to resign from the nine-member panel, Nestande wrote in a resignation letter to be delivered to Gov. Pete Wilson.

“My business activities have expanded to include other real estate associates companies,” Nestande wrote. “While it is possible to avoid legal conflicts while serving on the CTC, I do not feel it appropriate to serve on a public transportation commission while simultaneously being associated with several real estate-involved companies.”

State and local officials said Nestande’s resignation would leave a void and expressed hope that Wilson will appoint someone from Orange County as the successor.

“Bruce has been a tremendous asset to the success of getting transportation dollars for Orange County,” said state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach). “Orange County has been tremendously advantaged by his being on the commission. There’s no question it will leave a great vacuum there.”

Nestande’s tenure with the Transportation Commission, which he chaired in recent years, was etched both by his dogged efforts to win money for Orange County transportation projects and his strong support for freeway construction up and down the state.

“I think we all owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude,” said Dana Reed, chairman of the Orange County Transportation Commission. “Each day, we’re driving our cars on the highways that are his legacy.”

Reed noted that Nestande was not without critics, in particular officials from other parts of California who criticized the transportation commissioner for single-mindedly championing Orange County projects.

“I suppose one could argue that it’s not the role for a state transportation commissioner to bring home the bacon for their home area,” Reed added. “But thank God he did it because we had gotten the short end of the stick for so long.”

Among the Orange County projects championed by Nestande was the $1.6-billion effort to widen the Santa Ana Freeway.

In 1986, Nestande helped found the Transportation Corridor Agencies, the organization in charge of building three South County toll roads. He is also credited with launching Orange County’s “roads first” policy, in which road improvements must be synchronized with new development.

Nestande also fought for legislation that allowed some state Department of Transportation work to be contracted out to private engineering firms in hopes of speeding highway construction, and for establishment of a separate Caltrans district for Orange County.

But his relationship with developers caused him some difficulties.

In 1989, some Costa Mesa residents questioned Nestande’s role in the city’s attempt to build a new off-ramp on the San Diego Freeway at Arnel’s Metro Pointe complex near South Coast Plaza, but he abstained as a Transportation Commission member and did not lobby for the off-ramp.

Nestande resigned from the Orange County Board of Supervisors in 1987 after an unsuccessful campaign as the Republican nominee for secretary of state in November, 1986. A former state assemblyman from Orange, he quit the Legislature and won a seat on the Board of Supervisors in 1980, defeating Edison Miller.

In 1982, then-Governor Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, a Democrat, stunned political observers by appointing Nestande to the state commission.