Ferguson Doubts Legality of Newport Coast Drive Toll : Transportation: He asks attorney general to probe plans for San Joaquin Hills tollway to overlay road.

Saying he would ask the state attorney general to investigate, Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) said Wednesday that he is not convinced it is legal to incorporate a stretch of Newport Coast Drive into the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor.

Ferguson acknowledged that he has no assurance that the attorney general will honor his request for an investigation into what amounts to “taking a public road and putting a toll on it.”

The challenge was made following a 2 1/2-hour private meeting attended by Ferguson and officials from the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, the county, and the cities of Irvine, Laguna Niguel and Newport Beach. The meeting was held at the Pacific Club near the John Wayne Airport.

“I have not been convinced that what transpired is legal by state law,” the state legislator said. “And even if it was legal, the public did not know” what was planned.

Newport Coast Drive, which opened to traffic in 1991, starts at MacArthur Boulevard near the airport and winds around Corona del Mar before connecting to East Coast Highway. Plans call for the tollway to overlay a 1.4-mile stretch of the Newport Coast Drive near MacArthur Boulevard, thus cutting off a free and convenient passage from the Corona del Mar Freeway to East Coast Highway. The tollway is to be completed in 1997.

County and toll road officials tried in vain to convince Ferguson that a joint-powers agreement used to form the TCA and state law enable the agency to establish a tollway overlapping a public road.

While the concept of a transportation corridor has been in the works for at least 15 years, it was only clear last year that a 50-cent toll would be placed on what is now Newport Coast Drive, Newport Beach Councilman Phil Sansone told Ferguson.

“Citizens do not think this was done aboveboard,” Ferguson said. “That is why we are here.”

Corona del Mar residents have been particularly vocal because they fear that motorists will opt to travel free of charge along East Coast Highway and MacArthur Boulevard and clog their town.

For their part, TCA and county officials took Ferguson and others through a painstaking recitation of the chronology of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor project. Ken R. Smith, director of transportation for the County Environmental Management Agency, said that project documents dating back to 1988 foretold the tollbooth on Newport Coast Drive.

At stake is the collecting of tolls along the transportation corridor to help pay for the $1.1 billion in bonds sold publicly last March to finance construction, which is underway. Tollbooths along the 1.4-mile stretch of Newport Coast Drive would help bring in additional revenue from motorists.