Court Says Agency Shrunk Harbor District Illegally

An effort by Oxnard and Port Hueneme to cut Camarillo and Thousand Oaks out of the Oxnard Harbor District was thwarted this week by a state Court of Appeal decision.

The court, in a ruling issued Wednesday in Ventura, said a county planning agency acted illegally last year when it approved a dramatic shrinking of district boundaries without considering whether to seek voters’ approval first.

At stake is who will govern the Port of Hueneme, the only deep-water port between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Last year, about 200 vessels docked at the port’s five commercial berths, carrying 760,000 metric tons of cargo, Deputy Director Bill Buenger said. By one estimate, the port pours $200 million annually into the county’s economy.

Since 1937, when the Oxnard Harbor District was formed to build and manage the port, it has been governed by a five-member board elected from a 163,000-acre zone stretching from Oxnard through the southern half of Thousand Oaks.

But in 1989, the cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme asked the Local Agency Formation Commission, made up mostly of city and county officials, to shrink the district boundaries to include only those two cities.

“The impacts caused by the port are felt almost totally in Port Hueneme and Oxnard,” said Dorill B. Wright, a Port Hueneme councilman. “Yet the decisions that govern the port are made by a majority who live outside the Oxnard-Port Hueneme area.”

Three of the district’s board members live in Camarillo, while the other two are from Oxnard.

Wright said studies show that the two cities receive 85% of the vehicle traffic produced by the port. The cities also suffer most of the noise and air pollution caused by the port, he said.

The Harbor District board opposes the shrinkage, which would remove 119,000 acres and 80,000 voters, 57% of the total electorate. If anything, the board said, the district should be enlarged to include all of Ventura County.

“This is a port that is really regional in scope,” said Anson M. Whitfield, attorney for the Harbor District. “It should have regional planning, which means input from more people, not fewer people.”

In March, 1990, the five-member LAFCO board unanimously approved the boundary change. Wright was one of four public officials on the board. LAFCO directed the city of Port Hueneme to handle the legal mechanics, such as notifying property owners and running legal advertisements.

The Harbor District filed suit, arguing that LAFCO did not consider whether to order an election on the proposal. The cities of Camarillo and Thousand Oaks also have taken stands against shrinking the district.

In July, 1990, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Melinda A. Johnson sided with the district. She ruled that LAFCO should have at least considered holding an election. She also ruled that Port Hueneme scheduled a hearing on the boundary change before it should have done so.

Although the appeals court ruling upholds Johnson’s decision, the issue has not been completely resolved.

Officials at LAFCO and Port Hueneme believe that they have fixed the legal problems identified by the courts. After Johnson’s ruling last year, LAFCO formally considered whether to hold an election and decided against it. And the city of Port Hueneme took care of the technical objections raised in Johnson’s ruling.

But the Harbor District has filed a second lawsuit that challenges the reduced boundaries on constitutional grounds. “Both the federal and state constitutions require that there be an election,” Whitfield, the district’s attorney, said. “These people have an investment in this thing,” he said, referring to residents of Camarillo and Thousand Oaks.

Now that the first suit has been resolved by the appeals court, the issues raised in the second one will be heard in Superior Court, said Noel A. Klebaum, an attorney in the county counsel’s office, which represents LAFCO.

Taxes are not an issue in the dispute.

In its early days, the district issued bonds backed by tax dollars, but residents have not been taxed by the district for many years, because the port is profitable, Whitfield said.

Whitfield said he expects the second suit to be resolved by the end of the year.