Groups Work to Retain 2 County Commissions

Leaders representing a spectrum of human rights, labor, social welfare, women and gay groups mobilized Monday to launch a campaign aimed at persuading county supervisors that the commissions on human relations and women are too valuable to disband, despite the county’s current fiscal crisis.

A group of about 40 activists voted to stage letter-writing and telephone campaigns as well as demonstrations and press conferences to draw attention to the work of the Orange County Human Relations Commission and the Commission on the Status of Women.

The group also voted to tap “heavy hitters” among their members--political contributors and influential community leaders such as police chiefs--to buttonhole each of the five members of the Board of Supervisors.

“It is time to really be vocal and push as hard as we can,” said Elena Layland, past president of the county chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Ted Heiser, a Westminster black whose lawn was a scene of a cross burning in 1988, said he would stage a press conference and try to speak to the supervisors.

“If I can get on the agenda, I’m going to tell them what the Human Rights Commission did,” Heiser said. “When we had this cross burned on our lawn, the Fire Department arrived and they didn’t know what to do. The police didn’t know what to do. But the commission came in . . . and right away held community meetings and calmed things down.”

The 20-year-old Human Relations Commission and the 17-year-old Commission on the Status of Women were targeted for elimination July 23 as the Board of Supervisors sought to erase a $67.7-million deficit in its 1991-92 budget. Dissolving both panels would save the county an estimated $432,000.

The tentative decision caught the commission members by surprise and sparked an outcry among community groups and county activists who contend that the poor, women and minorities will be the losers if the panels are eliminated.

The Orange County Chiefs of Police and Sheriff’s Assn. last week urged the supervisors to keep the Human Relations Commission, saying the panel has helped to reduce racial and ethnic tensions throughout the county and improve cultural awareness training for law enforcement officers.

“We think the commission’s cultural exchanges . . . in many cases involving hate crimes all lend themselves to a peaceful and safer Orange County,” association president and Costa Mesa Police Chief David L. Snowden wrote in a July 29 letter to supervisors. “We think that the commission and its staff of conscientious workers are accomplishing needed change.”