Toll Roads for O.C. Gain Some Ground in House

Orange County officials working to speed construction of three controversial toll roads won a major victory in Congress on Tuesday when a House subcommittee signed off on language easing legal barriers to the multibillion-dollar projects.

The measure would exempt the Orange County toll roads from federal law restricting highway construction near or through parklands. The exemption was slipped into a technical amendment to a five-year, $153.5-billion transportation bill under consideration in the House.

The move, applauded by local transportation officials and denounced by some environmentalists, was orchestrated largely by Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), who represents southern Orange County. However, in a highly unusual development, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), said after the subcommittee acted that he did not know the exemption was included in the bill.

“I was advised this morning that those provisions were not included,” said an obviously annoyed Cox. “I can’t evaluate them because I haven’t read them.”

Packard, who worked out the deal over the weekend with the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose), said the exemption applies only to the three Orange County toll roads.

The language approved Tuesday would exempt the three toll road projects from some, but not all, provisions of Section 4-F of the 1966 law that created the U.S. Department of Transportation. The so-called 4-F provisions essentially ban the use of federal funds to build highways through or near public parklands unless a local government can demonstrate that there is no feasible alternative. The Federal Highway Administration would decide if the local government had made a case. But the agency’s decision would, of course, be subject to lawsuits and adjudication by the courts.

The exemption approved Tuesday applies only to parklands that are acquired by public agencies as part of highway construction projects--that is, private property that would not have become parkland if the highways had not been built.

Each of the tollways in Orange County slices across fallow parcels that are planned as parkland by the developers who own them. Eager to ensure the pay-to-use roads go in, developers have delayed giving up the property until they are sure the 4-F provisions have been cleared and the tollways can be built. In the meantime, the delays have angered residents eager to see the parkland opened.

A similar transportation bill approved by the Senate last month includes no exemption for the Orange County tollways. Before the exemptions become law, they must survive consideration by the full House and a House-Senate conference committee.

A spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies, which is building the three toll roads, applauded the action of the House subcommittee. Wally Kreutzen, the agencies’ deputy director for finance and administration, said it would speed the acquisition of public parklands along the San Joaquin Hills, Foothill and Eastern toll road corridors.

“It allows the roads to go forward,” Kreutzen said. “It says there is not an issue” with the parklands.

“This is an environmental victory,” added James F. McConnell, Orange County’s Washington lobbyist. But members of two environmental groups--the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Laguna Canyon Conservancy--strongly disagreed.

Janet Hathaway, an attorney for the NRDC, said the exemption “turns upside down” the principle of parkland preservation and “strikes close to the heart of communities all over the nation.” She added, “Parks are always the cheapest place to locate a highway.”

Hathaway said her organization will continue to fight inclusion of the Orange County provision in the final version of the transportation bill.

Michael Phillips, executive director of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, said he had lobbied Packard and Cox to ensure Orange County was not exempted from the law. “For our legislators to do this to us is unconscionable,” Phillips said. “They had better never call themselves environmentalists because they have just proven they are not. We won’t forget.”

Packard and Cox are members of the surface transportation subcommittee of the House Committee on Public Works on Transportation. The subcommittee included the parkland exemption in a bill that would reauthorize all federal aid programs for highways, bridges, bus systems and rail lines.

The panel took no action on separate requests backed by officials of Disneyland and the city of Anaheim for new parking garages, highway off-ramps and other transportation improvements in the downtown Anaheim area. Through five Democratic congressmen, Disney had asked for $395 million in federal funds for the project, while Anaheim officials had asked for $175 million.

The full public works committee is expected to act on the requests Thursday.

Leslie Earnest contributed to this story from Orange County.