Lawmakers Weaken Bid for County Waste Agency : Government: Local officials say a revised bill would leave the proposed authority without economic powers.

Ventura County’s attempt to form a countywide waste authority has been jeopardized because state lawmakers have declined to give the local agency the sweeping powers it needs to direct trash disposal in the county’s 10 cities, officials said Wednesday.

Under the legislation up for a vote before the Assembly Natural Resources Committee today, county and city officials would be allowed to form a group to set trash policies.

But local officials said state lawmakers refused to mandate the agency’s ability to set trash collection rates and administer contracts with trash haulers, duties now performed independently by the county and individual city governments.

“This is an out-and-out rejection of what we wanted to accomplish,” said Ojai Councilwoman Nina Shelley, who serves on the county’s Waste Commission. “It gives me no faith.”

For two years, local officials have been working on the legislation to form the waste authority to bring the cities and the county together under one centralized authority--a move that would bring an end to two decades of political infighting over waste management.

On behalf of the cities and the county, Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) sponsored a bill this year that would allow a merger of the county’s Solid Waste Management Department and the Regional Sanitation District.

But members of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee urged Wright to amend the bill so that state lawmakers were not forcing local governments to accept a new trash authority with state-mandated powers. The lawmakers, she said, did not want to set a precedent by meddling in what some argue is strictly a local issue.

“They said it was better if we just had the framework to form the authority,” Wright said. “They went around and around. I was told we wouldn’t get the votes.”

Members of the Ventura County Waste Commission--a group of county and city leaders--held an emergency meeting on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the changes in the proposed bill.

Although members of the commission said they were disappointed that the legislators had revised the bill, they could not decide whether or not to ask Wright to withdraw it.

Supervisor Maggie Kildee, the chairwoman of the commission, suggested that the county push forward with the bill with the hope that it could be amended next year.

“We could still get the powers with the legislation in place,” Kildee told the group.

But Oxnard City Councilman Michael Plisky argued that the county should abandon the legislation.

“We cannot take a piece of junk, and that’s all this is, and expect that maybe we will get what we need,” Plisky said. “It looks like we are never going to be able to get the power.”

But county Supervisor Vicky Howard said the commission had worked too hard on the legislation to give up now.

“It doesn’t do everything we want it to do,” Howard said. “But if we started our reorganization . . . we can work through the other issues.”

The Assembly Natural Resources Committee will meet this afternoon to vote on the bill. If it passes the committee, it will be forwarded to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee next week.