Power Politics, Power Grids

Term limits and local elections transformed cities and counties across California, while an energy crisis threatened the state for months, only to be replaced by broader financial worries that promise to dominate Sacramento in early 2002.

In Orange County, the fight over whether to build a commercial airport at the former El Toro Marine base continued to drive local politics. Other hot debates: the redrawing of county supervisor districts, how tobacco lawsuit settlement money should be spent and whether Aliso Viejo should become the county’s 34th city.

In Los Angeles’ 2001, the electorate spent much of the year replacing its leaders. All three citywide elected officials got their jobs in 2001, as did a majority of City Council members. Council President John Ferraro, 76, the longest-serving member of the group, died. Alex Padilla, 28, the youngest member of the chamber, took his place as City Council president. A Democratic mayor replaced a Republican one.

In Sacramento, the challenges were more governmental than political, as state officials spent the first half of the year trying to keep the lights on and the latter half trying to figure out how to pay for their earlier actions. Gov. Gray Davis’ year was dominated by the energy crisis, and he now faces the task of patching together a budget even as he attempts to win reelection against the eventual victor of a fight among three Republican contenders: Secretary of State Bill Jones, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and businessman Bill Simon Jr.

Though governments across the state faced their own local quandaries, some issues transcended locale. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and hardening recession upended priorities throughout California along with the rest of the country. By December, public agencies across the state were wrestling with higher security costs even as they tried to adjust to declining revenue brought on by the sluggish economy.

Dominating Orange County’s politics in 2001--and no doubt into next year--was the El Toro debate.

In October, county supervisors approved a plan for a commercial airport there. That, of course, settled nothing in the seven-year fight over what should be done with the former Marine base.

There are court battles that remain to be waged, environmental studies and public opinion polls to be hashed over, and key federal approvals required before an airport could take flight.

Voters will get yet another chance to voice their opinions in March. Airport or Great Park? That’s essentially what’s at stake with Measure W, which qualified for the ballot after supporters gathered more than enough signatures.

El Toro also played a major role in Aliso Viejo’s incorporation vote. In March, 93% of the voters in the South County community chose to make Aliso Viejo Orange County’s newest city, the eighth in the last 13 years.

The move was motivated by the traditional reasons: feeling underrepresented by a county government based in Santa Ana and wanting more control over how tax dollars are spent.

But the creation of Aliso Viejo, population 45,000, will be felt in El Toro’s future. As an unincorporated area, Aliso Viejo had no standing in the airport debate; as a city, it could join the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority and financially back the group that opposes the airport.

Battle Over O.C.’s Share of Tobacco Funds

One issue that had nothing to do with the airport was the county supervisors’ attempt to have voter-approved Measure H overturned in court.

The measure requires that 80% of an expected $750 million the county will get from the settlement of a federal lawsuit against tobacco companies be spent on health care and anti-smoking programs.

The November 2000 initiative was overwhelming supported by voters. But supervisors, who wanted to spend the bulk of the money on jails and to repay debt from the county’s 1994 bankruptcy, claimed the measure usurped the board’s authority.

Supervisors sued to overturn the measure, naming not the voters but Dr. J. Brennan Cassidy, the immediate past president of the Orange County Medical Assn. and a supporter of Measure H, as the defendant.

State Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer argued against the suit in an Orange County courtroom--the first time he had personally handled a case since being elected to office.

Eventually, the fight was abandoned when Supervisor Jim Silva joined two other board members in saying they would not support an appeal of Measure H. In March, supervisors approved a new 80-bed mental health facility--the first project for which tobacco money was earmarked. A week later, the board awarded Dr. Cassidy $60,000 to pay his legal fees.

Demographic changes rather than political party affiliation dominated the once-a-decade process of redrawing supervisor districts in Orange County.

Supervisors initially had 14 maps to choose from. In August, they adopted new boundaries that keep Santa Ana, the county’s largest city, in one district, increasing the chances of a Latino being elected to the board in 2004.

Santa Ana, which is 76% Latino, had been divided among three county supervisorial districts. The new 1st District, which also includes Garden Grove and Westminster, is 56% Latino. The last Latino on the board was Republican Gaddi Vasquez, who resigned after the county bankruptcy.

When the Los Angeles mayoral race picked up speed in January, the top six candidates spent most of the time trying to distinguish their positions on topics such as left-hand-turn signals, neighborhood councils and shortened workweeks for police officers.

“We all have the same vision,” businessman Steve Soboroff, the sole Republican in the race, joked at one congenial mayoral forum. “You dial 1-800-VISION, and you get the vision.”

By summer, with the race narrowed to City Atty. James K. Hahn and former California Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, the candidates were increasingly defined in negative terms. Hahn challenged Villaraigosa’s commitment to fighting crime, and aired a commercial that interspersed images of his opponent and a crack pipe; Villaraigosa angrily accused Hahn of cynical politics and smear tactics, and compared him to a notorious Los Angeles mayor of yore, Sam Yorty.

Hahn won with 54% of the vote, helped along by two bases of support not generally united: conservative whites and African Americans.

With Hahn’s election, Los Angeles had a Democratic mayor for the first time in eight years. Rocky Delgadillo, a former aide to outgoing Mayor Riordan, was elected city attorney and became the first Latino citywide official of modern times. And Laura Chick became the first woman to hold such a seat with her victory in the city controller’s race.

Completing the out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new turnover, seven new members joined the 15-person Los Angeles City Council during the year, with still another seat to be filled in March.

Today, more than half of the council is younger than 50, and a majority of its members have served less than a year.

Hahn Draws the Line on Secession Threats

The coming year brings a broader political challenge to the Los Angeles mayor’s office: the continuing press by some residents in the San Fernando Valley and other areas of the city to break away from Los Angeles.

Hahn has staked his authority on the defeat of those efforts, and in the closing months of 2001 began to wage his counter-campaign. “I will not allow my city to be divided,” the mayor declared.

The secession campaign, which includes possible breakaway efforts in San Pedro and Hollywood as well, is likely to unfold in the most uncertain of political times, with an electorate apprehensive about war, terrorism, and the state and national economies.

In late November, Los Angeles’ administrative officer warned of a $180-million budget gap because of a drop in tax revenue and unanticipated costs such as increased security since the terrorist attacks. Even with the city’s reserve fund, Los Angeles could face an estimated $20.7-million deficit.

Similarly gloomy reports were issued across the state. Governments, forced to beef up even as taxes dropped, hoped for relief from Sacramento, but lawmakers there are confronted with the same conflict. As the year closed, state lawmakers faced the prospect of having to cut $4 billion from the current budget, and are confronting a $12-billion deficit in the new budget that must, by law, be in place by July 1.

The gap is so big in part because the state spent much of 2001 buying electrical power and insisting that it would pay for that effort by selling bonds. Those bonds remain unsold, and without them, officials concede that the budget squeeze in the coming year will be one of the tightest in recent times.

That would be just one residue of the power crisis of 2001, an issue that came to the fore just before the year began and overshadowed all other work by the government.

“For me, it was the year lost to energy--one-sixth of my legislative life lost to energy,” said Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek), who perhaps more than any other lawmaker became enmeshed in the issue. In the first year of his final Assembly term, Keeley spent dozens of nights engaged in detailed negotiations that droned on into the wee hours and dealt with arcane problems never before confronted by legislators.

Other issues were barely noticed in the power morass. Health care legislation was proposed, and stalled. Lawmakers granted significant new rights to domestic partners, including gay couples, and imposed new licensing restrictions on prospective handgun owners.

Even legislative reapportionment, which can make or break politicians’ careers, received merely passing notice in 2001. The plan worked out by the Senate and Assembly was easily approved.

For all involved, energy was the most complex policy issue they had ever faced. Independent power companies were charging utilities unheard of sums for wholesale electricity. The state was forced to get into the power business when major utilities exhausted their credit. And the term “rolling blackout” entered the general lexicon.

Davis spent most of the first four months of the year scrambling to keep the lights on--failing six times when blackouts hit--and trying to block an electricity rate hike, fearing a ratepayer revolt that would rival the property tax-slashing Proposition 13 of 1978.

By April, the state Public Utilities Commission had stepped in and raised rates, prompting Davis to go on statewide television to announce that he too relented and would support a rate hike.

He had hoped that action would have eased financial pressure on the utilities.

But the next day, Pacific Gas & Electric, the century-old mammoth utility that is among the state’s biggest private employers, concluded that the rate hike came too late and was insufficient, and that state politicians were unable to solve its problem.

“The negotiations that we have been involved in since last November are going nowhere,” Robert Glynn, chairman of PG&E; Corp., said on the day the firm filed its bankruptcy petition.

Davis was furious: “I believe PG&E; has dishonored itself and has created undue alarm among 34 million residents.”

The governor ordered his aides to seal a deal to save Southern California Edison from the same fate. By the following week, Davis and Edison had unveiled an agreement that he insisted would rescue the company.

It fell through, however. Republicans refused to support it, as did Democrats in the state Senate. Once again, the PUC stepped in, working out a deal to save Edison from bankruptcy.

By the end of the year, rolling blackouts were a fading memory, and officials in Sacramento were awaiting, with dread, the next crisis: the governor’s budget proposal.

That document will be on lawmakers’ desks in the coming weeks, and they will debate it under the full glare of a gubernatorial campaign, a contest that promises to dominate California’s government and politics for most of 2002.

Earlier installments of this series are available at https://www.latimes.com/reflections2001.

Times reporter Mike Anton contributed to this report.