CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / PROPOSITION 180 : Senator Questions Legality of Initiative

Questioning why a statewide parks bond initiative contains language exempting itself from a law he authored, a state senator Wednesday threatened to call for a criminal investigation if Proposition 180 passes next week.

Blasting the initiative’s backers as “gigantic egos who trade on the age-old instinct of greed and avarice,” state Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) criticized the Yes on 180 campaign for accepting donations from landowners who stand to gain if the measure passes.

Opponents say they can show that landowners or developers have contributed up to $180,000 to help pass the initiative.

If approved by voters Tuesday, the measure will be the largest parkland bond package in state history. The initiative contains $2 billion worth of environmental projects on a list of properties stretching from south of the border to the upper reaches of California.

Speaking about its proponents, Kopp said: “They have no shame. They will take money from anyone and any corporation, any entity to satisfy their gigantic egos.”

The main backer of the ballot measure, known as CALPAW, dismissed Kopp’s charges as slanderous hyperbole.

“This is a political hit--a last minute, desperate act,” said Gerald Meral, head of the Planning and Conservation League, which sponsored the initiative and has collected more than $2 million to help get it passed.

“This is America,” Meral said. “It’s legal to approach landowners for support. They are entitled to sell their land for a fair price. You don’t take that right away from people.”

A similar but smaller Planning and Conservation League initiative in 1988 won voter approval for $776 million worth of park bonds. That measure, Proposition 70, sparked Kopp’s efforts to reform the initiative process.

Angered by the league’s tactics in gathering support for the 1988 initiative, Kopp wrote a law forbidding anyone from including a project in an initiative in exchange for campaign contributions.

His statute outlawed a quid-pro-quo practice for initiative backers that, if openly used by elected lawmakers, could result in convictions on political corruption charges.

Planning and Conservation League officials are challenging Kopp’s law in the courts and said their attorneys advised them, as a safeguard, to include wording in the initiative exempting it from the statute’s provisions.

But Kopp pledged Wednesday that if the measure passes, he will ask the state attorney general’s office or the Sacramento district attorney to conduct an investigation into whether the league acted properly in writing in an exemption from the law.

“Maybe we can interest a grand jury into asking questions and making people answer them under oath,” the state senator said at a news conference.

Meral charged, however, that Kopp’s law is unconstitutional because it tramples on 1st Amendment rights to free speech in the political process.

“As for his implications that the law was broken, it’s slanderous and there is no truth to it,” Meral said, noting that contributors were not approached until after the ballot language was determined.

Joining Kopp at the news conference were Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., and Henry Agonia, former director of the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

Fox and Agonia criticized the initiative as fiscally reckless during a time when the state has trouble funding critical needs such as education and crime fighting.

Fox singled out a provision of the initiative that dedicates $2 million for a Central American center to study bird migration--an expenditure that league officials say is worthwhile because it would help experts figure out why migratory bird populations in California are dwindling.

“Is it a wise use of California taxpayers’ money to build a $2-million bird sanctuary in Central America instead of spending that money in South-Central Los Angeles?” Fox asked.