NEWS ANALYSIS : El Toro Debate: Lots of Talk, Little Resolved : North and South County cities ‘discuss’ but don’t negotiate. Supervisors say they want action but remain officially silent.

The race to plan the future of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station became a no-win contest this week with representatives of 20 cities running in place and Orange County supervisors sitting on the sidelines.

To the winner goes the prize: the right to have one of the lead roles in determining how the 4,700-acre base will be developed when it is closed by the Defense Department sometime before 1997.

In the view of 13 North County cities, winning means advancing their fight to turn the military base into a huge commercial airport. And for seven South County cities, a victory means a louder voice in their continuing battle to block an airport in their back yard.

There was a lot of talk this week--20 weeks after the decision was made to close the base--about the need to “move ahead” and “compromise” on the makeup of the base planning agency. But when the dust settled nothing had changed.

City officials from both sides were quick to characterize the conversations as exploratory discussions, not “negotiations.”

And as telephone lines hummed between city halls from Anaheim on the north to Laguna Hills on the south, new agendas were created in the three-way fight for control:

* In North County, the once-loud roar of cities demanding fair representation on the yet-to-be decided El Toro base panel diminished last week to anxious whispers over how to increase their numbers and win the backing of the county Board of Supervisors.

* South County City Council members rejected suggestions that support was eroding for the planning agency they have envisioned and proposed to the county, and prepared to take their plan “on the road” in search of key political support. Their plan would give South County cities veto power over any redevelopment option.

But three weeks after a tentative agreement with two county supervisors was announced, the plan’s sponsors--Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Thomas F. Riley--had yet to place it on the supervisors’ meeting agenda and no one could say if it ever would be.

* And at the county Hall of Administration, all five supervisors adopted a hands-off posture toward the sporadic discussions between North and South County cities, with some hinting that county government was preparing to reassert itself and take control of the planning process.

Having once abdicated their authority to Vasquez and Riley during earlier negotiations with South County cities, the three remaining supervisors are returning to their original position: that the entire, five-member Board of Supervisors must be involved in any planning for El Toro’s future.

“The (remaining) three supervisors woke up and realized this was not a jurisdictional responsibility to be left to the representatives of the (South County) districts to decide,” Board Chairman Harriett M. Wieder said last week. “It is a broad county responsibility.” Echoing Wieder, Supervisor Roger R. Stanton said: “I think it’s our responsibility. We have to take the heat one way or the other. . . . I’m just tired of the process dragging on.”

While there remains a faint hope that the city officials can arrive at a compromise, few county officials said they would be surprised if they don’t.

“Given the history of this whole process these last several months, the odds are probably against resolution (between the North and South County cities),” one county official said privately.

Added another: “We’re waiting for the North-South discussions to terminate, and when nothing comes out of them, we are going to have to go forward, regardless.”

Prodding the county along are politically influential business groups. They have asked the supervisors for authorization to begin “fact-finding” studies on issues such as environmental cleanup of the base and transportation needs--information that eventually will be needed, no matter who is chosen to pick the base’s future use.

Business leaders argued that time is being wasted while the cities haggle over control of the base-conversion planning. As negotiations drag on, they added, Orange County falls further behind other regions also seeking planning grants from the Defense Department.

“What I am hearing is some real frustration,” said Todd B. Nicholson, president of the Industrial League of Orange County. “If it’s sensed that we are not about to come together--and by every indication that certainly has been the case to date--we are at risk.”

The question now is: What will it take to reach consensus?

Basically, North County cities do not want the process controlled by South County cities. They support a plan that includes all five supervisors, five city representatives--one from each supervisorial district--and a board member from the city of Irvine, which has 300 acres of the base in its city limits, and borders a lengthy stretch of the base’s perimeter.

Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, who is optimistic city officials can work together, said both sides first have to decide whether El Toro is a countywide issue or a local neighborhood decision.

“The size of the property and the infrastructure that’s in place around the property leads most people to the conclusion that this is a regional issue with tremendous importance to the future of Orange County,” Daly said.

But South County officials don’t want to give up control.

The South County plan, negotiated with Vasquez and Riley, ran into opposition once the three remaining supervisors looked at the fine print.

The proposed agency required a two-thirds vote on any final redevelopment decision, effectively giving South County cities veto power. County officials also were dismayed to learn the county would have only eight out of 161 votes as part of a weighted voting system on a lower-level panel that would screen the base-conversion options.

Supervisor William G. Steiner said the Vasquez-Riley plan was not “dead on arrival,” but needs to be significantly modified before it would be acceptable in his eyes.

During a recent private meeting with council members from Irvine, Laguna Hills and Lake Forest, Steiner said, he and Stanton set the ground rules: all five board members must be involved and the lopsided voting rules would have to be tossed out.

“If there was not a willingness to reconsider those issues, we made it clear that there probably would not be support from the other three supervisors,” Steiner said.

Irvine Mayor Michael Ward and Laguna Hills Councilwoman Melody Carruth said recently the starting point for talks should be their South County plan, which they believe is “far from dead.”

If the plan changes, Irvine officials insist that their city be given equal power to the county.

“I would say the county’s land-use authority along with Irvine . . . that’s something the South County cities might be willing to look at,” Carruth said.

For his part, Vasquez has not held any recent meetings with South County city officials, and he and Riley are leaving it up to the city representatives on both sides to work things out.

Nor is Vasquez surprised that Stanton, Steiner and Wieder now want the full board to have a say in the decision-making process on El Toro. “That’s the way it’s been from the very beginning,” he said.

Officials said the whole matter could be simplified if an outside source--like the federal government--would step into the fray and say who it thinks should be at the negotiating table.

Capt. Dave Larson, the Defense Department’s point man on El Toro, recently defined the required “consensus” group as one that is “multi-representational or multi-jurisdictional--a public-private sector mix; it would include those areas that were impacted by the closure.”

Garden Grove Councilman Mark Leyes likened it to the U.S. Supreme Court’s definition of pornography. “You can’t define it, but you know it when you see it,” Leyes said, “and community standards vary from place to place.”

Despite the current stalemate, officials believe that something resembling a “consensus group” eventually will begin planning for the El Toro base conversion.

“The worst thing that can happen is no plan at all because the public would be unforgiving,” Steiner said.