All Bets Are Off on El Toro Airport

Residents of South County can rest much easier this holiday now that the County Board of Supervisors has abolished the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority. The El Toro Marine base isn’t going to become a commercial airport any time soon, thanks to the board’s imperious behavior, probably never.

The board’s precipitous decision to deny Irvine and Lake Forest any planning authority over the future reuse of El Toro should raise serious suspicions at the Department of Defense about the inclusiveness and rationality of the county’s new reuse planning process. The department is not likely to view the board’s action as one designed to encourage consensus-building about various reuse options. Nor, given the county’s financial debacle, is the department likely to view the Board of Supervisors sufficiently competent to plan the reuse of El Toro unilaterally, without the direct involvement of the two adjacent municipalities.

Consequently, the Defense Department could deny the county reuse authority over El Toro until such time as: (a) the planning authority gives impacted cities a direct say in all land use decisions and/or (b) the county manages to get its financial house in some modicum of order.

In the meantime, the board’s hasty aggrandizement of planning authority liberates both Irvine and Lake Forest to challenge all subsequent county decisions regarding land-use planning at the base in court. Neither Irvine nor Lake Forest will sit still while the Board of Supervisors makes decision that directly impact the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Not only will the legality of Measure A be challenged in court by South County cities, but so will all subsequent El Toro land-use decisions made unilaterally by the county. A decade or more of litigation over El Toro is now in the offing.

As long as El Toro Reuse Planning Authority was in operation, the Defense Department would have remained satisfied with the reuse planning process and the cities of Irvine and Lake Forest, as authority members, would have been reluctant to take the county to court. Now all bets on the future of El Toro are off. What Orange County voters came ever so close to achieving on Nov. 8, the Board of Supervisors may have accomplished in a single, ill-advised vote on Dec. 20. Another holiday gift from the gang who couldn’t shoot straight at the County Hall of Administration.

MARK P. PETRACCA

Irvine