COMMENTARY ON MARINE BASE : Letting Market Decide ‘Best’ Use of El Toro Ignores the Public : The highest bidder won’t necessarily have the society’s interest in mind. An initiative is needed to decide fate of property.

Auctioning off the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to the highest bidder may appeal to the market enthusiasts in the county, but it will not guarantee a reuse plan for the base which serves the public interest. Only a direct decision by the public can accomplish that.

What should be done with the El Toro Marine base? No other question will spark as much debate and controversy in Orange County during the months and years ahead. North County cities and Newport Beach want El Toro turned into a commercial airport. Cities in South County don’t. Each group may soon form its own joint powers authority to assert control over the future conversion of the base.

Meanwhile the Board of Supervisors is muddling through its creation of an El Toro Advisory Committee intended to present a “united front” to federal authorities and, not incidentally, to maintain county control over El Toro’s destiny.

One increasingly popular way out of this political morass is legislation proposed by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) to simply sell the El Toro and Tustin Marine bases to the highest bidders. “By privatizing the property and insisting on local zoning control,” explains Cox, “we can ensure the property will put to its highest and best use.”

This might result in a commercial airport at El Toro or it might not. The market will make the final judgment.

Not surprisingly, this proposal is gaining adherents throughout the county. Some see Cox’s proposal as the “best,” “most efficient” and “fairest” way of all to determine the redevelopment of El Toro. There are two distinct advantages to this proposal. The auction of El Toro would generate the largest sum of money possible for a financially strapped federal government, and it would remove politics from the decision of what to do with the Marine base.

However, a market solution is fraught with difficulties that far outweigh its apparent advantages.

To begin with, the Cox proposal produces the “highest and best use” for El Toro only by definition. Whatever conversion plan is proposed by the highest bidder will constitute the “highest and best use” for El Toro. There are no independent standards for determining or judging the “highest and best use” for El Toro under the Cox proposal.

That determination is exclusively a function of who has the most money on the table. Whoever purchases the base will determine how the base will be redeveloped. No other decisions need be made by any government agency about El Toro other than who has the biggest bag of cash.

This is what it means to leave El Toro’s future to the market. County residents should question the logic of permitting the entity with the most money to determine how the base will be used, regardless of the consequences for the community.

Is the “highest and best use” of El Toro necessarily that plan which will bring the largest profit margin to its new owner? Maybe, but maybe not. Projected profit margin is only one criterion by which such an important development should be judged.

One thing is certain: Whatever the future holds for El Toro the public will be frozen out of the decision-making process altogether under Cox’s proposal. Yes, there’ll be the perfunctory hearings and other opportunities for the public to let off steam. But unless ordinary citizens band together to enter the bidding war over El Toro, the public will have little to say about how the base will ultimately be redeveloped.

Public preferences are represented in the market only to the extent that they are supported by purchasing power. Yet when it comes to El Toro, the public’s purchasing power will be minuscule to nonexistent. Though this probably suits most potential investors and a great many elected officials, it should trouble most residents who will have to live with the consequences of whatever El Toro becomes.

Finally, a market approach to El Toro’s future would likely ignore the external economies created by specific redevelopment plans.

The highest price offered for El Toro by a private investor need not include payments to mitigate or compensate for added noise, traffic congestion, pollution, the loss of fertile agricultural land or the destruction of open space.

If the cost of acquiring and redeveloping El Toro is lower than the social costs imposed upon the community, the market can not rectify this pricing failure without direct government intervention.

Yet under the Cox proposal, no prior restrictions on the redevelopment of El Toro would be placed upon the highest bidder, vesting the new owner with a legal right to development regardless of local zoning laws.

Notwithstanding these objections, a market solution might still be prudent if El Toro was private property. But it’s not. El Toro belongs to the public. Therefore the public should have the greatest possible say in determining its future use. This isn’t likely to happen by holding hearings at which government officials politely receive and then promptly ignore public testimony.

Public decision-making is needed, not public input. Instead of trusting the magical “hidden hand” of the market to determine the “highest and best use” for El Toro, why not rely on the collective wisdom of Orange County residents?

I realize this is a novel idea for public policy-making in Orange County. However, the public is in a much better position to protect and serve its interests, if given the opportunity, than is a market dominated by corporate-investors and land developers.

To this end the Board of Supervisors should place an initiative on the earliest possible ballot to allow voters to rank in order their preferences for the future reuse of the El Toro Marine base. After the votes are tallied, El Toro can be marketed for the specific land use most preferred by the public.

The public will get the redevelopment plan it selected, the federal government will receive the highest price for that particular land use, and, most important of all, no elected official will have to take any responsibility for the outcome.

Sometimes democratic decision-making has advantages the market does not. Instead of continued bickering over who should negotiate the future of El Toro with the federal government, the Board of Supervisors should step up to the plate and place the future of El Toro where it belongs--in the capable hands of Orange County’s residents.