Debate Heats Up While Spitzer Pushes Charter

Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer appears to be facing a tough sales job in his push for a county charter that would, in part, prevent Democratic Gov. Gray Davis from naming a successor should Spitzer win an Assembly seat.

The job of supervisor is nonpartisan, but it’s no secret that all five board members are Republican. Spitzer insists that getting the charter measure on the March 5 ballot is not a “Democratic-Republican thing.”

“It’s inappropriate to have a vacancy filled by a distant politician in Sacramento,” Spitzer said. “The people have an absolute right to vote for someone to represent them.”

But the proposal, on Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors agenda, could have trouble attracting the support of at least two other board members, let alone the county’s Democrats come election time. It would create a county charter that incorporates existing state laws for counties, but with a requirement for an election to fill supervisorial vacancies.

Spitzer has been raising money since December in an effort to replace outgoing Assemblyman Bill Campbell (R-Villa Park). A Spitzer win would mean that Davis would probably choose a Democrat to serve the remaining two years of Spitzer’s term, not a welcome prospect for the county’s dominant political party. The Board of Supervisors hasn’t had a Democratic member in 15 years.

But Democrats say they see through Spitzer’s ploy as nothing more than a “self-serving whim,” said Frank Barbaro, the county’s new Democratic Party chairman.

“How many years have we been a non-charter county? Seventy? One hundred?” Barbaro said. “Suddenly, to suit the whims of one politician who has upward political mobility in mind, we have to spend a ton of money on an election just to satisfy his whim of fantasy. It just isn’t going to work.”

Davis has made bipartisan appointments in the past, Barbaro said, at least for the judicial bench.

An informal poll of county supervisors showed that Spitzer’s proposal could eventually be approved, but that is unlikely to happen Tuesday.

Supervisor Chuck Smith and board Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad said they believe not enough is known about the proposal’s impact on the county. They said the proposal needs to be studied.

“The reasons for doing this are all wrong,” Smith said. “What I would want to do is to set up a charter committee to take a look at this, because this is obviously a political attempt to pick his successor, and to do this for a specific supposed problem without some in-depth study is not the thing to do.”

Coad and Smith said they might consider enlarging Spitzer’s plan to include the way board members are selected for two local agencies: the Orange County Transportation Agency and the Local Agency Formation Commission. Those board members are not elected by voters but appointed, and making them elected boards could be considered by a charter committee, the supervisors said.

Supervisors Jim Silva and Tom Wilson could not be reached for comment but are said to be leaning toward a charter system.

Spitzer has won endorsements for the charter plan from most of the county’s Republican state legislators: Sens. Richard Ackerman and Bill Morrow and Assembly members Bill Campbell, Tom Harman, Ken Maddox, John Campbell, Lynn Daucher and Patricia Bates.

Only 13 of California’s 58 counties have charters, which are individually crafted sets of laws. The remainder, including Orange County, are governed by general laws set down by the state.

Charters create more local autonomy. But once a charter system is created, it allows for a greater number of governmental changes, said Mark Petracca, head of the political science department at UC Irvine.

“In principle, more local autonomy is better than less local autonomy. But it depends on what’s in the charter,” Petracca said. “Once you’re a charter entity, you do have subsequent autonomy to tinker with all kinds of things, and that part can be dangerous.”

But with the board’s endorsement record on recent ballot measures--Measure H on tobacco settlement spending and Measure F against an El Toro airport both passed despite board opposition--Petracca said board support could kill the charter idea among voters.

“In this county, the best voting cue is to vote in the opposite direction of the board. If you put something on the ballot and have the board say ‘Vote for it,’ it gets voted down,” he said. “Just by putting the proposal on the ballot and having the board approve it is a risk in itself.”

The charter plan, Spitzer said, would retain the county’s general law system as set by the state Constitution and its term limits statute for board members, which calls for an election to choose a supervisor when a vacancy occurs.

In a letter to board colleagues, Spitzer urged that they take “the path to self-determination” and join other counties and cities that “are now in control of their futures.”

Spitzer said his plan is all the more necessary with term limits bringing a turnover of current board members in the next six years. “The board used to be a place where people stayed forever. But vacancies will become the rule, not the exception,” he said.