Is Voter Control a Contradiction in Newport Beach?

In an interesting twist, the city that led the battle against an anti-El Toro airport initiative may be the next to adopt its own ballot measure giving voters the power to decide the fate of certain development projects.

In November, Newport Beach voters will consider adopting the so-called Greenlight Initiative, which was placed on the ballot after residents gathered more than 7,000 supporting signatures. If passed, it would require a majority of voters to approve developments changing the city’s general plan if the projects increase traffic by more than 100 trips daily, add more than 100 dwelling units or add 40,000 square feet in size.

Nearly 70% of Newport Beach voters cast their ballots against Measure F, which requires approval by two-thirds of Orange County voters before county officials can build airport projects, hazardous waste landfills and jails with more than 1,000 beds within half a mile of homes.

Only Costa Mesa--by a razor-thin margin--joined Newport Beach in rejecting Measure F, which passed in the March 7 election with an overwhelming 67% approval countywide.

Though developed separately, both the county and city measures share an underlying concept: Voters should have the final say on major projects.

Comparing the two, however, rankles some supporters of the Greenlight Initiative, several of whom were active in the fight to defeat Measure F. They see Measure F as an underhanded move to kill the airport, while they characterized the city effort as a way to protect growth limits within Newport’s general plan.

“Putting us in the same pot is apples and oranges,” said Phil Arst, a proponent of the Greenlight Initiative and secretary of the Airport Working Group, which provided the bulk of the grass-roots effort against Measure F.

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The city’s repudiation of Measure F isn’t mutually exclusive of support for the local initiative, said Greenlight proponent and former Newport Beach City Councilwoman Evelyn Hart. She said the city’s vote against Measure F was motivated by fears that, without El Toro as a new airport, John Wayne Airport on the city’s northern boundary would be expanded.

“Measure F had a completely different message for Newport Beach,” Hart said. “But they’re similar to the extent that people want input on future growth and where it’s going to go.”

Orange County isn’t the first county in the state to face these types of voter-control ballot measures.

The enticement of giving voters the final say on development is a California phenomenon that began two years ago, said Clayton Traylor, who tracks local measures for the National Assn. of Homebuilders in Washington.

In 1998, seven initiatives in Ventura County contained vote requirements for development projects within growth-control boundaries; all but one passed. Three initiatives last year in the East Bay area near San Francisco would have triggered public votes for any project adding 10 or more dwelling units. All were defeated.

While Measure F was built--and sold--on the same voter-control premise, it is unique, Traylor said, because it was “tailor-made” to stop an airport at the shuttered El Toro Marine base.

“Often there are differences in the motivations of people who put something on the ballot and the motivations of the voters at large,” Traylor said.

The Greenlight Initiative, on the other hand, is more of an import from other areas in California where local residents wrote development thresholds into city charters and required votes for anything that proposed to go beyond them, he said.

To be sure, there are significant differences in the mechanics of Measure F and the Greenlight Initiative. For example, the county measure requires votes for specific types of projects, while the city measure would trigger votes based on a project’s expected impact.

Also, the city initiative calls for a simple majority vote, while Measure F requires two-thirds passage, which many critics said creates an impossible hurdle.

Like Measure F, several initiatives elsewhere in California contained thresholds for voting that opponents suspect were set to discourage project proponents from even trying.

“Intuitively, the understanding is that very few [proponents] can afford as a business proposition to invest capital and time to take a project to the point it’s ripe to go to the ballot [but] with no assurances that it’s going to be allowed [by voters],” Traylor said.

Several Newport Beach officials said the city initiative is a frontal assault on representative government because it sets up voters as a “super city council.”

“Greenlight is essentially a preemptive referendum on every general plan amendment in perpetuity,” said Newport Beach Councilman Gary Adams, a traffic engineer.

On the heels of Measure F’s passage, Greenlight’s approval in November would have “devastating” ramifications for local government in Orange County and across California, he said.

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The underlying motivation for all of these measures is a lack of trust in elected officials to “do the right thing” when the stakes are highest, said Mark P. Petracca, who chairs the political science department at UC Irvine.

At the county level, overwhelming support of Measure F was a message that residents lack confidence in the Board of Supervisors’ ability to plan big projects--in this case, the airport, Petracca said.

The message of the Greenlight Initiative, he added, is that voters don’t trust their elected officials to be incorruptible, or above being influenced to change the city’s growth blueprint at the behest of developers.

“In many ways,” Petracca said, “that’s an even stronger indictment of representative government than Measure F.”