California’s Growth Plan

It is disappointing that your article on growth management (“Wilson Has Yet to Act on Growth Plan,” March 9) chose to dwell on the negative rather than on Gov. Pete Wilson’s leadership in this long-neglected area.

It is certainly true that the governor’s growth-management program has been several months longer in coming than originally expected, but that is hardly important in view of the long-range importance of these issues to California’s future. How we deal with growth in California will shape the development of our state into the next century.

Wilson is the first governor to seek to come to grips with these issues in a generation. He has done so at a time when the state’s budget is in free fall, the economy is in a tailspin and the Legislature is preoccupied with political infighting.

Added to this is the fact that many constituencies have wildly different views on how the state ought to develop, if at all, from environmentalists who want to pull up the drawbridge to developers who want unchecked growth.

Different legitimate views are also held by members of the governor’s Growth Management Council and Cabinet, who do and should reflect their institutional missions. Nevertheless, you do the council a grave disservice and reflect a lack of information by alleging “turf battles” and internal disagreement as reasons for delay. The council has forged consensus agreement on the vast majority of recommendations, and in the most controversial areas has laid out alternatives.

Right now there are other issues whose immediacy must be addressed, from a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, to the need to get California’s economy moving again, to education and welfare reforms. There is also, as your article points out, growing doubt whether the Legislature is prepared to deal with these issues seriously and not play politics.

Wilson pioneered growth management in San Diego before anyone had even coined the term. As an assemblyman he wrote the state law that set up a statewide planning office. Rest assured that his proposals, when they come, will be careful, thoughtful and will make sense.

These issues will last beyond this Legislature and beyond this governor. What is most important is that we build a careful framework now. That may take time, but it is a job worth doing well.

RICHARD SYBERT, Chairman, Growth Management Council, Sacramento