County Counsel’s Lively Tenure Ends

His bags were supposed to have been packed last month. But July 31 came and went, and County Counsel Laurence M. Watson still found himself at his desk this week, signing off on legal documents.

Not only had the Orange County Board of Supervisors been unable to hire a successor, which it finally did last week, but a judge had ruled against an initiative sought by opponents of an El Toro airport because its ballot title and summary--completed by Watson’s office--were faulty.

Watson was promoted to the job, the county’s top legal post, after the 1994 county bankruptcy. And he is leaving at another flash point: the battle over the initiative, which proposes a “Great Park” and could alter the county’s plans for a commercial airport at the 4,700-acre former El Toro Marine base.

The latest turnaround came Friday, when an appellate court stayed that earlier ruling.

Apparently, Watson couldn’t manage to leave the building quietly.

“On July 31, all these friends of mine called telling me there’s an adjustment period,” Watson recalled. “I told them, ‘Funny, it’s just like work,’ because it was.”

Last week, county supervisors hired Assistant County Counsel Benjamin de Mayo, 51, as Watson’s replacement; de Mayo took over the legal reins Friday and Watson was finally able to depart. De Mayo will head an office that has grown to a staff of 98, including 61 attorneys.

Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad, an airport advocate, praised Watson, saying, “We’re losing a good attorney.”

Former County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider called Watson an “unbelievable gentleman, and one of the finest lawyers” he has worked with.

Gaddi Vasquez, a former county supervisor and now President Bush’s nominee to head the Peace Corps, said Watson had a “can-do attitude in terms of giving us good, sound legal advice and always providing the board needed research to make a sound decision.”

But like many careers in the county, Watson’s may be forever linked to the El Toro airport fight.

For anti-airport leaders, Superior Court Judge James P. Gray’s ruling earlier this month that voided the “Great Park” initiative petitions, with 128,000 signatures, was a severe blow. The initiative’s ballot language, which Gray found misleading, was challenged by Bruce Nestande, a former county supervisor and an airport proponent, along with the pro-airport Citizens for Jobs and the Economy.

Gray’s ruling angered anti-airport volunteers such as Jack and Clea Lynch, a retired couple from Dana Point who had never before donated to a political campaign or gathered signatures. They say the ruling, the county’s and Watson’s role in it, and the subsequent decision by the pro-airport majority on the Board of Supervisors not to appeal Gray’s ruling has embittered them.

“This is not a dignified way to leave your post. I wouldn’t want to retire in that way,” Clea Lynch said of Watson.

On Friday, an appellate court in San Diego stayed Gray’s ruling, based on an appeal by airport foes. The decision allows the organizers to use the disputed signatures to qualify the initiative for the March 2002 ballot, said an anti-airport attorney.

Watson is the first to say that the airport is an incredibly divisive issue and that both sides watch every comment on it that his office makes.

“It’s an emotional issue and our office has been scrutinized nearly every time we issue an opinion,” he said. “And, like other issues, both our opinion and competency are called into question.”

Watson, who lives in Mission Viejo, where anti-airport sentiment runs high, says he is often asked his opinion on the airport and whether he believes it will ever be built.

“My opinion is irrelevant,” he said he tells them, adding that the office is apolitical. “We don’t try to influence or set policy. We just try to get answers to questions. That’s the role of this office.”

Indeed, even Watson’s critics note that he urged supervisors to appeal Gray’s ruling on the initiative.

During his tenure, Watson defended the county in several high-profile, and sometimes oddball, cases. Among them: that of former Supervisor Bob Battin, convicted in 1976 of felony misuse of staff for political purposes, and the county assessor’s office seeking a much higher property valuation on former President Nixon’s Western White House in San Clemente.

Then there was the case about jalapeno peppers. More than 400 jail inmates petitioned for the hot peppers, saying that they had a constitutional right to them and that not being served the peppers was tantamount to ethnic discrimination.

The inmates didn’t get their peppers.

“This has been a ride, an unbelievable ride,” Watson said.