6 Influential City Leaders to Leave Posts : Politics: Members of councils formed fiscal, transportation and environmental policies. Goodbys come this month.

Stan Oftelie, chief operating officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority, is losing the heart of his starting lineup.

In a year of passing the torch in local politics, six of Orange County’s most influential city council members, four of them members of OCTA’s board of directors, are leaving office this month. They are the Tom Foleys and Dan Rostenkowskis of local politics in terms of power and prestige, with a total of 90 years of public service.

But more than just wielding power, these six are recognized as consensus builders who came out of their neighborhoods to become regional leaders in forming difficult transportation, environmental and fiscal policies.

Stepping down are Daniel H. Young of Santa Ana, Gary L. Hausdorfer of San Juan Capistrano, William D. Mahoney of La Habra, Robert F. Gentry of Laguna Beach, Evelyn R. Hart of Newport Beach and Henry W. Wedaa of Yorba Linda. They will not be easily replaced, Oftelie said.

“These people represent a generation of leadership in this county,” said Oftelie, whose transportation board oversees an $625-million annual budget. “A thread among them is that they have all won reputations for their integrity. I’m sure every one of them has made somebody angry at one time or another somewhere in the county. But you know what they stand for. That’s admirable, I think.”

Departure is always bittersweet. At least two of the six--Young and Hausdorfer--had bright futures in politics at one time, both as potential candidates for Congress. Hausdorfer also was a strongly considered candidate for the County Board of Supervisors.

Oftelie said he thinks they would have been fine representatives for the county. He does not tire of talking about the two good friends--now business partners in a public affairs company that, among other things, runs a minor league baseball park in Lake Elsinore.

“There is no way I can estimate how much value Dan Young has contributed to my board or this county, no way I can place a value on it. It’s been spectacular,” Oftelie said, adding that Young “led the charge” for passage of Measure M, a transportation tax that will fund road improvements for decades in the county.

“Think about it. Here in this toughest of counties, where there hadn’t been a tax revenue increase since the Eisenhower Administration, Dan Young was totally instrumental in getting all the cities to sign on to this,” Oftelie said.

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Young, now 43, a 1969 Santa Ana High School graduate, became the longest serving mayor in the city’s history, from 1988 until this fall. Although criticized by many in the city’s booming Latino population as insensitive to ethnic issues, Young maintains that politics in Santa Ana are less divisive today than in 1983 when he took office as a councilman.

Young said his legacy will be that he helped restore Santa Ana’s schools by forging a city-school district partnership called Education First and buoyed the local economy through redevelopment.

“I was threatened with recall because the redevelopment agency was subsidizing a redevelopment project called MainPlace,” Young said. “Everyone said we were throwing money down a rat hole. . . . No one is questioning those things anymore.”

Hausdorfer became the second chairman of the OCTA board and managed to mesh the four formerly disparate transportation agencies together while smoothing out what easily could have been major rifts between competing egos, Oftelie said.

“It went smooth primarily because of Gary’s extraordinary effort to make sure everyone was heard and everyone had a voice,” Oftelie said. “Gary has a real gift . . . to be able to bring up the most contentious and controversial topic in a way that doesn’t offend anybody. He has an ability to create harmony that is almost magical.”

Hausdorfer, 48, a 16-year member of the San Juan Capistrano City Council, was the mayor for nearly five years, longer than anyone in the city’s history. He helped forge a local coalition to pass a $21-million bond issue in 1990 to buy open space in the city to save it from development.

“It was the first time and only time in the history of the city that the residents approved a municipal tax,” Hausdorfer said. “I’m proud of that, not only because I was able to play a major role, but for the long-term benefits. One hundred years from now, these open lands will still be part of San Juan Capistrano.”

Gentry is the other one of the six outgoing council members with the poise and ambition to pursue further objectives in politics. But Gentry, California’s first openly gay elected official, acknowledged that he’s in the wrong county for a political future and there was no way he would leave his beloved Laguna Beach.

“I love the public policy process, and I have a great love for local government. But I happen to be a registered Democrat and openly gay in one of the most conservative counties in the nation,” said Gentry, 56. “I am not in the closet about my homosexuality or my party affiliation. But there are other ways to participate.” Although many people in conservative Orange County do not like Gentry’s liberal politics, few people doubt his courage. He said openness and honesty are the keys to local politics.

“It’s important to always respect the process of democracy and the citizens involved,” he said.

Like many local politicians, it was back-yard issues that got Gentry, Hausdorfer, Wedaa and Hart involved at the beginning.

Gentry was trying to save two pine trees in a lot next to his home. Hausdorfer was upset about dirt generated by a nearby development project. Wedaa did not like the proliferation of apartments in his city. Hart was irked by litter on the beaches and the lack of local recreation programs.

Hart, 63, who arrived in Newport Beach from Pomona in 1952, also found herself unhappy about such other relatively mundane things as bike trails and the disrepair of City Hall.

“I found myself wanting to make decisions for my city,” said Hart, an activist for her homeowners association who got some support and won a seat on the Newport Beach City Council in 1978. It was the year of Proposition 13, and Hart, like council members around the state, was thrown into a budget crunch when tax monies no longer came to city coffers.

“We immediately had to shift gears and balance our budget,” she said. “We’re going through the same things now. It’s always money. If it’s plentiful, you can do more things.”

Hart went on to become chairwoman of the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission, a member of the OCTA and the Orange County Republican Central Committee. Her focus had to shift from bike trails to more heady problems, such as turmoil in the city’s Police Department and a city administrator embezzling public funds.

“Evelyn is a great team player--she doesn’t seek the spotlight,” said Jim Colangelo, for five years the executive director of LAFCO. “Of all the people I worked with in Orange County, I can’t think of anybody who cared more about the job she was doing. The thing that always struck me, when she made a decision that was unpopular, she always wanted to go talk to the people and explain to them that she understood why they felt the way they did.”

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Wedaa was the first among the six to become a council member, back in 1970 when Yorba Linda was a tiny rural town of about 6,000 people.

Wedaa, a physicist from New Jersey who worked in aerospace, did not like the talk of a proliferation of apartments in rural, equestrian Yorba Linda. These were the early days of the slow-growth movement in the county.

During his 24 years on the council, Yorba Linda grew to a city of 56,000, and built City Hall, a local library, the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace and kept its rural flavor.

“I’m a big believer in large lots and low-density developments,” said Wedaa, 70. “I had the opportunity to build the kind of city that families want to live in. That was one of my goals and I think we succeeded admirably.”

Wedaa’s brush with controversy came during one of his many regional posts--his three-year reign as chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. He was criticized by environmentalists for being too lax, by business people as too onerous.

“You can’t win at that job,” he said. “But I think the bottom line is, people are breathing cleaner air in this county.”

Mahoney, 53, a La Habra probate attorney who has lived in the city for 34 years, is known for his staunch conservatism and sound judgment. He said he never sought involvement in politics and was convinced to run for the council in 1982.

He wound up a major player in regional politics as a member of the OCTA board and nine-year member of the 42-member Orange County Sanitation Districts board, including three years as its chairman.

Mahoney’s interest has always been in economic development, and within the past few months two new businesses, including the Super Kmart Center, have arrived in La Habra, opening up 1,000 new jobs, he said.

“Finances are what pays the bills and keeps things moving along,” Mahoney said, adding, though, that it’s the people on the staffs of local government who make or break the leaders.

“The people who do the day-to-day work make these organizations perform,” Mahoney said. “They are directly responsible and deserve the credit.”