LOCAL ELECTIONS / 3rd SUPERVISORIAL DISTRICT : Growth-Environment Debate Central to Race for Golding Seat

Pam Slater sees herself as the environmentalist candidate, treasuring her Sierra Club endorsement and the “managed-growth” position it underscores.

Judy McCarty sees herself as the pro-business, pro-development candidate, who believes jobs and a resuscitated economy are the county’s most pressing needs.

With time running out in the race for the District 3 seat on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, neither Slater, 44, nor McCarty, 52, cares to venture a guess on the likely winner. And both are reserved in their comments about the other.

McCarty says she’s more qualified, that two terms on the San Diego City Council are more bracing for the job at hand than Slater’s experience as an Encinitas councilwoman and mayor.

Slater argues that her opposition to a trash-burning incinerator in North County--a hot issue if ever there was one--and McCarty’s “waffling” on a similar project in San Diego demonstrates her “consistency and commitment.”

She says McCarty now opposes the controversial process, despite having supported a toxic-waste incinerator in La Jolla. McCarty says that, actually, she doesn’t support trash-burning and in the past merely called for a vote on the issue.

Slater also criticizes McCarty for her stand on the ill-fated Jackson Drive extension, which would have connected California 52 with San Carlos by cutting a roadway through the heart of Mission Trails Regional Park.

The decision to build the roadway was later reversed, but McCarty, in Slater’s words, “still stubbornly supports the idea.” McCarty agrees, saying its defeat was unfortunate for commuters destined to endure a bumper-to-bumper crunch on Mission Gorge Road.

Slater advertises her candidacy with green signs, featuring a tree resembling a pine. But she hastens to note that she’s also endorsed by the Carpenters’ Union--a way of saying she is hardly no-growth.

McCarty says no one can be pro-environment at the expense of jobs or at the cost of rejuvenating industry.

“The county has created a climate in which businesses can no longer succeed,” she said. “They’ve done it with over regulation and permit fees. We’re constantly getting in the way, inhibiting even the potential for growth.”

Both women say the environment and the economy are not the only issues in a district with 318,000 registered voters that encompasses the county’s midsection, from Carlsbad to Mission Beach along the coast and east to San Carlos and Rancho Bernardo.

McCarty calls the county’s struggles with a budget of almost $2 billion a “crisis.” She promises to eliminate programs, boards and commissions in county government and reduce “all” departments. She would vote for layoffs “if necessary.”

Slater advocates a “comprehensive, independent, outside audit” of county government as a prelude to making “significant cuts without cutting services.”

Both candidates, one of whom will replace Susan Golding, see law enforcement as a high priority, favoring the opening of new jails and beefing up the Sheriff’s Department as soon as possible.

But Slater has won the endorsement of the county’s Deputy Sheriffs’ Assn., which credits her with increasing the level of sheriffs’ support in Encinitas.