Wilson Has Yet to Act on Growth Plan : Government: Governor has not produced a long-promised proposal to balance economic and environmental interests to manage rapid development. State budget woes and bitter legislative battles are among the reasons.

Fourteen months after taking office amid warnings that California’s future is threatened by rapid, uncontrolled growth, Gov. Pete Wilson has yet to produce a long-promised plan to balance economic and environmental interests.

Interviews with Administration and legislative sources indicate that the recession and continuing state budget problems, Wilson’s escalating battle with Democratic legislative leaders, and policy disagreements within the Administration have combined to delay the plan.

Members of a high-level task force of agency heads and other key Administration figures have studied the problems of growth for a year. They have traveled the state and listened to hundreds of hours of testimony. They have published many reports. They have made recommendations to the governor, who has yet to act.

Late last year, spokesmen said growth management would be a top priority for the Wilson Administration in 1992 and that the subject would receive major attention in the governor’s State of the State address.

Instead, growth-related problems received only a cursory mention in the January speech and then disappeared under a blanket of silence.

Growth management refers to a series of land-use policies designed to solve long-term problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution, vanishing open space and deteriorating public works.

Wilson, who gained a reputation for effective urban planning as mayor of San Diego, has not lost interest in the subject. He still speaks and writes often about the problems that traffic congestion, bad air, overpriced housing and marathon commutes pose for California’s future.

“It is time to comprehensively plan our growth,” he wrote in the winter edition of the California Land Use Forum that came out last month. “We can no longer afford--socially, environmentally or economically--to do otherwise.”

Press Secretary Bill Livingstone said Wilson’s growth management plan is “still coming around the corner,” perhaps in April, but similar predictions have been made before.

The two most important reasons that growth management has fallen lower on the governor’s agenda are the state’s continuing fiscal crisis and Wilson’s increasingly bitter relations with the Legislature, especially with Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

The political winds also have changed. Stung by conservative criticism of last year’s tax increase, Wilson has placed more emphasis on welfare reform and less on an environmentally oriented issue such as growth management.

Policy disagreements and turf squabbles among the governor’s key advisers also have impeded agreement on a plan, sources close to the growth management debate said. And they said that Wilson underestimated the difficulty of the task.

“It’s just a very complex and difficult issue, with a lot of competing interests who don’t trust each other,” said a lobbyist who has been close to the struggle over growth management policy. “It was unrealistically optimistic for Pete Wilson to think he could put all this together in one year. This is the state of California, not the city of San Diego.”

As the recession deepened, and state budget deficits persisted, attention turned from managing growth to controlling spending and improving the business climate.

“I detect a basic shifting of the gears,” said Madelyn Glickfeld, a Los Angeles management consultant and land-use scholar. “People are concerned about growth when times are good, but not in hard times like these.”

Budget problems not only have occupied much of Wilson’s time and attention since he became governor, aides say, but they also have left little state money for growth management solutions such as building needed public works, buying open-space lands so they remain development-free, or providing subsidies for low-income housing.

The continuing warfare between Wilson and legislative leaders, especially Brown, has hurt the growth management effort, Administration officials said.

“We were frankly dismayed at what happened on timber,” said Richard Sybert, director of the governor’s Office of Planning and Research and the Administration’s point man on growth management. “It was clear the Assembly Democrats were just going to jam the governor any way they can.”

Sybert referred to Wilson-backed timber bills that were defeated in the Assembly last month, after Brown expressed strong opposition.

However, conservative Republicans also voted against the bills. In fact, more Democrats than Republicans voted for the timber package that Wilson wanted.

The work of the governor’s growth management task force was slowed by interagency disputes and turf wars, both Administration and legislative sources said. When Wilson appointed a Council on California Competitiveness, headed by former Olympic Games czar Peter V. Ueberroth, some of the interest in growth management drained away, these sources added.

Several sources identified Sybert as another part of the problem. He is generally regarded as a brilliant analyst who has shown only a limited capacity for building the kinds of coalitions needed for political success.

Despite these problems, Administration sources insist there will be a growth management plan.

“It’s been delayed because of the fiscal crisis and a change in the political dynamics,” Sybert said, “but this is not a PR exercise. It’s a hell of a lot more important to do it carefully and well than to do it this month or that. And it is going to be done.”

He said the Interagency Council on Growth Management has reached agreement on several important recommendations to Wilson. The council has said:

* There is a need for a comprehensive state plan that can act as a guide to local governments.

* Conflicts in existing state policies should be resolved. For example, one state agency’s desire to stimulate construction of affordable housing sometimes conflicts with another agency’s interest in preserving open space and agricultural land.

* Regional coordination should be strengthened, but without a new layer of government that would have taxing or operational authority. Sybert said regional coordination probably will be done through existing organizations such as the Southern California Assn. of Governments. Some task force members doubt that these relatively powerless groups can do the job.

* The state should reward cities and counties “that are willing to grow in an orderly way,” Sybert said, by giving them preference on bond funds to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure--and ignore those that do not.

* The California Environmental Quality Act should be changed to provide more upfront review of proposed developments, Sybert said, “so we can avoid these huge battles over individual projects.”

But he acknowledged that the task force left several important questions unanswered:

* Should air quality districts, especially the powerful South Coast Air Quality Management District, continue to operate independently, or should they be included in regional agencies that also deal with transportation, water quality and other statewide problems?

* Should there be some kind of boundary lines, determining what land is open for development and what should be left for resource protection, open space and agriculture?

* Should there be new revenue sources to pay for some of the growth management proposals?

“These are decisions the governor will have to make,” a high Administration source said.

Some Administration and legislative sources predicted that Wilson might not present a growth management grand scheme this year. Instead, he might issue administrative regulations in growth management areas that do not require legislative approval--such as making sure that state agency policies do not conflict.

The governor also could decide to work with the authors of several growth management bills that have been languishing in the Legislature for a year or longer, hoping that the process would yield bills that he could sign and that would at least get the state into the growth management business.

Toward that end, Sybert has asked state Sens. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) and Robert Presley (D-Riverside) and Assemblyman Sam Farr (D-Carmel) if they would be willing to discuss amendments to their bills. All have said yes, but Sybert has yet to suggest specific amendments.

“I’d like to see us at least come up with a blueprint for the state this year,” Presley said. “Sort of a general road map for where we’re going and how we get there.”

Sybert has not sought similar cooperation from a fourth author of growth management legislation--Brown.

Four other legislators have introduced “spot bills,” which could become vehicles for Wilson’s growth management plan if one emerges.

“What I’m trying to do is preserve as many options for him as possible,” Sybert said.