End Practice of ‘District Prerogative’

Although the Orange County Board of Supervisors consists of five elected officials, on many issues a single supervisor dictates the votes of all five. This is “district prerogative,” the longstanding practice of following the dictates of the supervisor whose district the project is in. The reason each board member goes along with this practice is that it assures each of them that they will have the support of the other four supervisors on issues that are in their district.

While this may sound logical, and is probably unavoidable given the way supervisors are elected to office on a district-wide vote, it is misused on projects that have countywide significance.

A few years ago, for example, the 5th District office took charge of the John Wayne Airport expansion because it was in its district. By the time the other four board offices realized months later that things were out of control and the 5th District office could not handle such a massive project alone, millions of dollars had been wasted, the airport was way behind schedule, and everybody had egg on their faces.

A countywide facility, such as a jail, is proposed for consideration on the El Toro Marine Corps base property.

It is hoped that all five supervisors will work together on a project of this magnitude--it is totally irrelevant whose district the base is in. The merits of a proposed jail facility need to be dealt with equally by all five offices and not dictated by one supervisor.

It is time for the practice of district prerogative to be abandoned on countywide facilities and services--and it probably would not be a bad idea to abandon the practice on all projects.

This would force each office to deal with proposals before them based on their merits, and not on the dictates of one supervisor.

Supervisor (Roger) Stanton once said when voting on a controversial project in another district: “This is the crummiest project I’ve ever seen and I’m going on notice now that this is the last time I’m voting on a bad project because of district prerogative.”

Amen!

SHIRLEY L. GRINDLE

Former chairwoman,

County Planning Commission

Orange