O.C. Business Leaders Can Commiserate at Irvine ‘Mini-Summit’ : Economy: 200 executives will air gripes to Speaker Brown and local assemblymen at gathering inspired by recent Clinton summit.

Orange County businesses have known for a couple of years that it’s the economy, stupid. Now they will get a chance to share that great truth with their legislators.

Two hundred business leaders will congregate here Friday for an economic summit inspired by President Clinton’s meeting of the minds in Little Rock, Ark., last month. Two dozen participants will get a chance to air their complaints about air-quality laws and other industry regulations before the county’s seven state Assembly members.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown is expected to make an appearance. The San Francisco Democrat has urged his colleagues to hold such conferences--pegged “mini-summits”--as groundwork for his statewide summit slated to take place next month.

Three Orange County assemblymen--Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) and Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove)--took charge of organizing the mini-summit. Ferguson’s office sent out hundreds of invitations to county business people, some of whom were asked to deliver brief talks about their own specific problems.

The scheduled speakers include Carl N. Karcher, chairman of Carl Karcher Enterprises in Anaheim; Roger W. Johnson, chairman and chief executive of Western Digital Corp. in Irvine; and Hank Lange, vice president of McDonnell Douglas Government Aerospace in Huntington Beach.

A few big names turned down the opportunity to tell their tales of woe--among them Irvine Co. Chairman Donald L. Bren and Aliso Viejo developer Kathryn Thompson.

“We will have someone in the audience, but we’re not making any remarks,” said Dawn McCormick, Irvine Co. spokeswoman.

Fluor Corp. is providing a conference room for the six-hour event in its Irvine building, as well as a sandwich buffet lunch. But the engineering company will be a no-show at its own party.

“Our executives had prior commitments, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think the summit is a valuable function,” Fluor spokeswoman Deborah Land said. “It’s not mandatory that we be there since we already are in close contact with the Assembly members.”

Fluor offered to host the event, however, because the company is “in favor of encouraging dialogue between businesses and legislators,” Land explained.

The speakers were asked to address three issues, Ferguson said: “We want them to tell us where they think Orange County is today economically in comparison to the rest of the state and the country; where their company is right now and the cause of their problems; and what we as a state could do to facilitate their growth.”

Ferguson said that he expects the recurring complaint of the day to center on California’s regulatory laws, viewed by many companies as stifling. “These businesses have 90 different agencies looking over their shoulders,” Ferguson said.

Indeed, at least some of the scheduled speakers--including Lange of McDonnell Douglas--plan to focus on over-regulation. “His attention will be entirely devoted to the environmental legislation that makes it difficult for us to do business here,” spokesman Tom Williams said.

Clarence Becwar, president of Becwar Engineering in Irvine, will echo that theme. “The Environmental Protection Agency, the Air Quality Management District, the county health department, the out-of-control workers’ comp system--they’re killing us,” he said.

Whether the summit will do much to fix the broken economy remains to be seen, Becwar said: “The politicians might listen, but will they hear?”