El Toro Airport Foes: Wait Till Next Year

In a radically shifting strategy this week, opponents of the proposed El Toro airport abandoned efforts to force a countywide vote on the Millennium Plan, their most potent tool in rallying public opinion to their side.

It is a move that confuses public-opinion experts and others watching the battle.

Leaders of the anti-airport movement conceded this week that they have run out of time to seek a special election this year asking voters to replace the airport with their non-aviation proposal for parks, businesses and homes.

Instead, they will push for a measure in 2000 that would require a two-thirds vote on any new or expanded airport, jail or landfill in Orange County.

“It’s a perplexing move,” said Cheryl Katz, co-director of the Orange County Annual Survey and the Times Orange County Poll.

South County airport foes spent more than $1 million to cultivate support for their Millennium Plan, and they seemed to be succeeding. A Times survey in May found that a majority of county voters favored their non-aviation plan over all four proposed airport plans combined.

Now, as the military prepares to leave the 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station in July, airport foes are changing their tactics.

“This new initiative is diverting the issue away from the airport,” Katz said. “What the new initiative boils down to is really no growth, and our polls show people don’t want that. They want Orange County to grow.”

The dramatic shift could indicate deeper problems for the coalition of anti-airport cities and activists.

“What all of this tells me is that they can’t agree on what to do and their consensus is falling apart,” said William Mitchell, former chairman of the Orange County chapter of Common Cause, which hasn’t taken a position on the airport. “And unless they can work together, they’re dead.”

Airport proponents, though, also are facing setbacks that make it less likely that they will be able to stick to their well-planned timetable for developing the base.

In recent weeks, county planners have admitted that necessary agreements with the federal government aren’t likely to be signed in time for the county to begin leasing base buildings and facilities after July. And negotiators can’t say when those critical agreements will be reached.

Meanwhile, South County court challenges to the county’s initial environmental study are pending before the state Court of Appeal, and a lower court judge is requiring the county to make changes in the study to better address traffic, noise and pollution issues.

Airport opponents said this week that they ran out of time to get a measure on the ballot in 1999 because they couldn’t agree on wording for an initiative and the steps needed to assure victory.

Unless a measure can be certified for circulation in the next few weeks, they said, the pro-airport majority on the Board of Supervisors could delay placing anything on the ballot until a regularly scheduled election in March 2000.

The change in tactics means airport foes will need to collect only half the signatures that would have been required for a special election. But it also means their measure would go before a larger pool of voters in a regular election. They could have dominated the typically low turnout in a special election, but not so in a regular one.

As they charge into uncharted territory with their new strategy, airport foes say they are wrestling with ways to expand support for their efforts and to better woo North County voters who are not directly affected by the airport. After failing to kill the airport in countywide initiatives in 1994 and 1996, they now want to build support for a sure victory.

Last week, Supervisor Tom Wilson, one of their two allies on the board, floated the idea of setting up the two-thirds public vote on any so-called “noxious” land use, specifically airports, jails and landfills.

Airport opponents figure that voters countywide would embrace such a measure because it would keep unwanted projects from being forced on their neighborhoods as well.

“It makes some sense,” said Irvine Councilman Larry Agran, a leader in the fight against the county’s plan. “It responds to what people hate: big government imposing unwanted uses that otherwise would never happen except for special interests.”

But the new strategy immediately came under criticism--some from within the anti-airport coalition--that it would squander hard-fought gains made to promote the Millennium Plan.

And there are other major hurdles, critics say. It’s uncertain that the newly planned initiative would even guarantee an end to the El Toro airport. Even if the initiative passes and survives a court challenge, it still would require another vote on El Toro.

By then, it might be too late, particularly if that final vote comes after the federal government conveys the property to the county for an airport.

Skeptics also point out that a countywide initiative battle would cost about $3 million and would probably get lost in an avalanche of political news and advertisements about a host of candidates and other issues.

And they question the legal grounds for the new initiative. The state Constitution requires a simple majority vote on initiatives or charter amendments.

In 1997, two proposed measures in Downey and Inglewood that would have required two-thirds votes for approvals of projects were thrown off the ballot after Superior Court judges ruled they were unconstitutional.