For Board’s Airport Backers, It’s Full Speed Ahead

After Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the Federal Aviation Administration has but one thing on its mind this week, and it’s not Orange County’s proposed El Toro airport.

So, for abundantly understandable reasons, the FAA has delayed releasing its analysis of the county’s plans to build an international airport at the former Marine Corps air station.

You’d think--or, at least, I would--that the Orange County Board of Supervisors would make a nod to that and temporarily stop the clock on the drive to make the airport happen.

Well, forget it. The slender board majority that favors the airport has decided not to wait for the FAA and will forge ahead Monday with a final vote that will commit it to a new airport.

Would the FAA report, which was expected months ago and has been delayed many times, make a huge difference in the thinking of the majority?

Almost certainly not. No one really expects the FAA to tell the county that El Toro is fatally flawed and unsafe for flying.

On the other hand, neither side knows what is in the FAA report.

Precisely the point, says airport opponent Leonard Kranser. He calls it an “absolute outrage” that the board is voting on its environmental report and the airport master plan Monday, without the public hearing what the FAA has to say.

“If it was good news, they’d be publicizing it,” Kranser says of the report, which had been scheduled for release Wednesday. “They know it’s going to be bad news.”

When talking to passionate people on either side of the airport issue, you have to remember that partisans tend to talk in the over-the-top language that usually accompanies wars or domestic disputes. Therefore, expressions like “absolute outrage” are often heard and sometimes need to be translated.

I’d translate Kranser’s “absolute outrage” into “really bad form.”

That is, what’s the board’s rush?

The rush is that the sooner the board approves the airport plan, the quicker the countdown to the needed federal transfer of the base. And, from proponents’ point of view, the sooner Orange County can start doing its share to meet regional transportation needs.

But a few more days? Is there any good reason to finalize things before the public hears what the FAA has to say?

I can’t think of any.

Gary Simon is the board’s El Toro manager and took on the job in January with a reputation as a straight shooter.

The El Toro issue is a severe test of that for people on both sides, but I asked Simon about calling a timeout until the FAA report is released.

“The county has been working with the FAA for the last four years and never at any point has the FAA ever come out and told us either in writing or verbally that the plan is unsafe and that there’s a fatal flaw,” he says. “ . . . Given that fact, the board desires to move ahead.”

That doesn’t totally address the matter of waiting to see exactly what the FAA has to say, and Simon is too honest to dispute that. So, he says the next best thing: “If the FAA report came out and said the current plan is unsafe, in that scenario we would probably recommend to the board that we need to do some further analysis and further planning. That’s a scenario where I’d go to the board and make a recommendation that we need to pause for a moment.”

That’s as much as Kranser and his anti-airport allies are going to get from the pro-airport board majority.

Theoretically, Kranser says, a highly critical FAA report might have delayed any board action. Who knows, he says, maybe press coverage and more anti-airport public sentiment might have given the majority pause.

He knows as well as I that nothing short of an FAA stamp of “REJECTED” would deter the three-member board majority.

Still, he makes what to my ears is an irrefutable point: “The whole country is locked down for a few days, and the board could have been reasonable and delayed [its vote] a few days.”

Be it absolute outrage or bad form, nothing apparently can stop the board majority from starting the clock Monday on a new airport.

The majority doesn’t seem to realize how callous it sounds by, in effect, saying to the FAA: “Send us that report when you’re not busy.”

Dana Parsons writes a column Wednesday, Friday and Sunday for the Orange County Edition of the Times.