Sting of the Gadflies : Coalition of Activists Gains Influence in Beleaguered Orange County

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.”

Civic-mindedness has gotten a huge boost from Orange County’s bankruptcy, a catalyst that has turned gadflies into killer hornets.

And some of the sharpest stingers belong to the Committees of Correspondence, an umbrella group for more than a dozen organizations whose members--such as Walters--are campaigning for government reform and threatening to recall politicians whose roles in the fiscal crisis are suspect.

“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 their phone calls are returned and their opinions are being sought by 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 County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who last week entered the hornets’ nest and addressed a Committees’ meeting.

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

Many of their demands have been met--though some critics question how much credit the group can take for forcing the actions. 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; he was demoted in late January.

Other demands remain unfulfilled, including the group’s call for John M. W. Moorlach, who ran against then-Treasurer Robert L. Citron last year, to be appointed to the post that Citron vacated in December.

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

The small group of coalition representatives who met last August in Bill Mello’s living room in Huntington Beach to talk about government executives’ pensions has now taken center stage. At the time, Mello, the Committees’ lead organizer, was directing the Citizens Bureau of Investigation in Huntington Beach.

It was the first time that 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 named itself after a Revolutionary War organization formed by Samuel Adams and other American 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.”

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

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

When the Committees meet, the audience is broken up into five groups, representing the county’s five supervisorial districts. The smaller groups talk. Then each takes an informal poll on recalling its supervisor. 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.

Some critics say the group is too concerned with vengeance 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.”

Said Petracca: “I’m delighted that they are participating in government. 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.”