O.C. Reform Group Gains Stature in Wake of Crisis

When Carole Walters took on City Hall seven years ago, she said her activism had trouble gaining credibility.

“The politicians used to laugh me off,” said the 50-year-old homemaker, who attended her first Orange City Council meeting in 1988 to save her house and 100 others from a Chapman University expansion. “Now, it’s different--100% different.”

Walters is part of the emerging force behind the Committees of Correspondence, an umbrella group of more than a dozen organizations that are forging a new page in Orange County’s history. With a name borrowed from Samuel Adams, the Committees’ 1990s brand of revolution embraces governmental reform, including threats of recall against county politicians whose roles in the bankruptcy crisis are suspect.

It is a metamorphosis for Walters and fellow organizers, from gadflies to killer hornets.

“We started out as a mutual assistance league for all the little municipal reform groups out there,” Fullerton activist W. Snow Hume said. “We wanted to train each other so we didn’t make the same mistakes. Who would have known that in early December we would have a county-scale reform problem? Fate transformed our little group.”

Not only have the laughs stopped, but the group’s phone calls are returned and its opinions are sought by both county and city leaders.

“I regard the formation of the Committees of Correspondence (as) a real healthy sign of true citizen interest in government,” said Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who last week entered the hornets’ nest and addressed a Committees of Correspondence meeting.

Organizers have learned there is strength in unity and have since joined with members of Ross Perot’s United We Stand and other taxpayer-advocate groups that have made a series of demands to supervisors and threatened to launch recall movements if ignored.

While some critics question how much credit the group can take, many of its demands have been met. For example, supervisors cut their staffs and perks and held their first-ever night board meeting last week. The group also asked that then-County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider be fired, and Schneider was demoted in late January.

Other demands remain unfulfilled, including appointment as county treasurer for John M.W. Moorlach, who ran against then-Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron last year.

“I haven’t agreed with every one of their proposals, but I’ve always been responsive,” said Supervisor William G. Steiner. “I would say the Committees of Correspondence has created an important forum for the public to focus on government.”

Indeed. The small group of coalition representatives that met last August in Bill Mello’s living room in Huntington Beach to talk over “spiking” of city-employee pensions has now taken center stage. At the time, Mello, the group’s lead organizer, was directing the Citizens Bureau of Investigation in Huntington Beach.

It was the first time the leaders of such groups as the Orange Taxpayers Assn., Anaheim HOME Committee and Fullerton Recalls Committee had come together, said Mello, 64, a retired engineer and well-known Huntington Beach City Council watchdog.

The group is named after the Revolutionary War organization formed by Samuel Adams and other colonists to oppose British taxation. Its conservative principles were highlighted in its mission statement: “Achieve unity in the battle against oppressive taxes and acts of tyranny by government.”

At first, the group’s meetings attracted only a few dozen people. But since the bankruptcy, interest has skyrocketed. Last week’s monthly meeting was attended by more than 200, including Stanton. Meetings now draw representatives of such diverse groups as Citizens Against Unfair Taxation and Drivers for Highway Safety, which opposes freeway car-pool lanes.

The Committees of Correspondence is run as a loose association, with meeting dates and other operational decisions made by a steering committee that includes Walters and Mello. The group does not charge dues but accepts small donations to pay for printing and mailing costs. About $400 was raised at two recent meetings when members passed around a coffee tin.

Organizers insist that they do not want to punish elected officials, especially if their demands are met. But they don’t deny that the organization has become a conduit for residents’ frustrations.

At the committee meetings, the audience is broken up into five groups, symbolizing the five supervisorial districts. The mini-groups talk and then have an informal poll on recalling their respective supervisors. Last week, Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez and county Auditor-Controller Steve E. Lewis headed the list of potential recall targets, which also included Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi.

Vasquez said he has read all of the committees’ literature sent to his office. But beyond that, he said, he does not know any organizers personally, “enough to make an assessment.”

Some critics say the group is too concerned with retribution and not enough with reform. UC Irvine Prof. Mark P. Petracca, who dubbed the organization “the Committee of Curmudgeons,” said many of its members are “anti-tax advocates, disaffected Libertarians and people who hate government per se.”

“I’m delighted that they are participating in government,” Petracca said. “But I do have to wonder what their general agenda is other than retribution. I don’t see a positive contribution to public policy yet.”

Common Cause and the League of Women Voters have long pressed county supervisors to conduct night meetings and make other reforms demanded by the committees, Petracca said. “They contributed to it, but they can’t take all the credit.”

Shirley Grindle, a longtime county critic and campaign reform advocate, said she was heartened by the public involvement sparked by the committees.

“I commend the leaders,” she said. “I just hope they can keep this going and not make it a single-issue, bankruptcy thing that will fizzle out in two months.”

It didn’t take long after the county declared bankruptcy Dec. 6 for Walters and other activists to begin receiving calls from outraged residents.

“We were disappointed (with county officials). We were angry,” recalled Mello, who has emerged as the Committees of Correspondence leader. “But we thought this was something we ought to be involved in. There are things we thought ought to be done.”

Steiner and other county officials said the group gained credibility by seeking a dialogue with supervisors rather than immediate confrontation.

“They’ve become a productive force,” he said. “It’s not been a disagreeable relationship. It’s been healthy.”

Stanton added: “This is not a group that’s out for blood. This is a group that wants to reform government.”

Indeed, the only recall effort underway was launched by someone not associated with the group. In December, County Department of Education Trustee Felix Rocha Jr. targeted Stanton for recall. Rocha has until July to collect the signatures of about 15,000 registered voters in Stanton’s district, which includes Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Fountain Valley.

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