Airport Backers Consider Own Initiative : El Toro: The measure would compete with the anti-airfield proposition headed for the March ballot.

Backers of a proposed El Toro airport are considering their own voter initiative to compete with an anti-airport measure heading for the March ballot.

Coming up with a competing initiative is one of several options that airport supporters, including businessmen George Argyros and Bruce Nestande, are mulling in their effort to thwart their opponents and keep plans for the international airfield on track.

Nestande, president of the pro-airport Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, cautioned that “we’re not in the process of drafting a counterinitiative.”

“I think we have to consider all options, but even if you write [a competing measure], you still have to beat the one that’s there,” he said.

Charles V. Smith, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, said he has heard the rumblings, but nothing has been submitted to the board. He is part of the 3-2 board majority that has pushed along plans for the airport.

“We’d take a good hard look at [a competing measure],” Smith said. “But at the board level, we’re not going to initiate anything on our own.”

Smith and Argyros met two weeks ago to discuss a number of El Toro airport issues, including possible competing initiatives, said a source involved in the pro-airport effort.

Supervisors have until Dec. 7 to place any such measure on the March ballot.

Argyros’ blessing on a competing measure would be key because he probably would be asked to finance efforts to promote it. The wealthy Newport Beach developer and financier spent $2 million on two previous airport initiatives and has pledged to spend more to ensure the airport’s construction. Argyros was traveling this week and couldn’t be reached for comment.

The thought of a competing measure angered South County airport foes, who turned in more than twice the signatures needed Tuesday to qualify their Safe and Healthy Communities initiative for the March ballot. Their measure would require a two-thirds public vote to approve any county plans to build or expand airports, hazardous-waste landfills or large jails near homes.

Airport foes branded the idea of a competing initiative insulting, “manipulative trickery” and something that would be “deeply resented” by the 5,000 volunteers who worked for nearly six months to collect 192,298 signatures for the initiative.

“It would obviously be done with malicious intent to confuse the voters instead of giving us a clean, up-or-down vote on the Safe and Healthy Communities initiative,” Irvine Councilman Larry Agran said. “My gut feeling is that it would backfire.”

The track record of competing measures at the state level is mixed.

Agran said legislators tried in 1978 to place a competing initiative on the ballot to neutralize the popular Proposition 13, the landmark California measure that lowered property taxes. Its competitor, Proposition 8, got swamped at the polls.

In more recent years, a group of consumer attorneys, worried about a lawsuit-reform measure on the November 1996 ballot, placed a competing measure before voters. Both measures failed.

Meantime, the city of Irvine, a leading opponent of the El Toro airport, last week hired the same consulting firm that twice before helped persuade county voters to support the airport.

The city is paying the consultants, Arnold Forde and Stu Mollrich, for a campaign aimed at Orange County corporate executives to promote nonaviation uses for the base.

The first payment consists of $100,000 for two months’ work and $39,000 in expenses. The contract can be renewed by the City Council at $50,000 a month for up to 22 months--a total of $1.2 million.

Nestande called the arrangement an effort to keep the consultants from assisting the pro-airport campaign for a third time.

“This outrageous consulting fee demonstrates their depth of desperation,” Nestande said. “We will not engage in a ridiculous bidding war for consultants for hire.”

Mollrich said he and Forde worked for five years for Argyros on both the 1994 Yes on Measure A campaign that created airport zoning for the base and on the 1996 No on Measure S campaign, which defeated an attempt by South County residents to rescind the earlier vote.

The firm’s contract with Argyros’ group ended a year ago.

“I’ve worked on the pro-airport side and I live in Laguna Beach,” Mollrich said. “At least now I can talk to my neighbors.”

Asked if the firm was hired merely to make them unavailable to pro-airport forces, Irvine Councilman Dave Christensen replied: “Absolutely not. We have a lot more respect for them than that.

“We couldn’t justify just paying people to stay off the field,” he said. “They’re first-stringers. They’re going to play.”