Oversight Is Key in El Toro Study

County officials and two supervisors recently tangled over the subcontracting of a firm to study landfills at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station without consulting the Board of Supervisors. Whether one is for or against an airport, the argument for board participation and for open discussion of base cleanup is strong.

Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Tom Wilson were unhappy not only because the contract was signed without board approval but also because it would cost about three times the amount originally intended. The board had been told first that the contract had been approved by staff and would cost between $75,000 and $100,000. Later, the contract showed $230,000 to hire the firm.

Given questions about process and cost, the board eventually refused to pay any more than $100,000 this year to an engineering company, GeoSyntech. It had been hired by McCutcheon, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, the law firm advising the county on contamination at the base. The board thus declined to expand the agreement on the testing of two long-closed landfills.

On one level, the issue was whether subcontractors could be contracted for environmental work at the base with approval only of county counsel, not the supervisors. Also, there was a question whether the subcontracting without approval from the board could have violated the county’s procurement policy. It requires any contract of more than $25,000 to be brought before the Board of Supervisors.

County officials maintained that they did not place the contracting for the tests on a public agenda because it was considered a subcontract. According to County Counsel Laurence M. Watson, any work done by the engineering company was considered the work of the law firm itself.

But on another level, the supervisors who were critical of the hiring raised an important point. Spitzer’s concern about process went to the heart of the supervisors’ oversight in an extremely sensitive aspect of the future of base reuse planning.

Given public sensitivity and interest in the cleanup of the base, it makes sense and good policy to have the supervisors involved on important decisions related to base contamination. We know that the cleanup is an extremely complicated and expensive process, and only an informed board has any chance of representing the public interest.

Although the federal government is responsible for environmental cleanup at the base and will monitor it afterward, the county can be held liable for environmental hazards once the land is turned over to the county in July of next year.

It is hard to see how the county’s top officials can make accurate representations on base cleanup later if they are not informed about them now. In post-bankruptcy Orange County, the idea that important decisions have to be left only to subordinates and experts won’t fly.