Workers’ Bit of Crystal Cove Paradise Could Cost More

On the surface, this latest dispute between authorities at Crystal Cove State Park and tenants fighting to stay at El Morro Village mobile home park wouldn’t seem to reach beyond the quaint beachfront enclave.

An Orange County assemblyman has accused three park employees living in renovated Crystal Cove cottages of improperly using state-owned facilities and has proposed legislation to kick them out.

But while Republican Chuck DeVore of Irvine has focused the legislation on the two rangers, a maintenance employee and their families, its reach would extend to 13 state agencies that provide free or subsidized housing to its employees -- including Caltrans and the Department of Corrections.

Under the bill, AB 1708, the state would be required to charge employee-tenants rents on a sliding scale, depending on location. Under current state policy, departments charge $148 a month per unit, and they don’t differentiate between beachfront properties or isolated inland locations. Statewide, 443 parks employees live in park housing, officials said. The number fluctuates seasonally.

“Shouldn’t the state be recovering a decent amount of rent from these people?” DeVore said. “They’re giving their employees a benefit on the backs of taxpayers.”

His bill is the latest salvo in one of Southern California’s longest-running disputes over public beaches.

The state bought Crystal Cove, a 3.5-mile stretch of coast south of Corona del Mar, from the Irvine Co. in 1979 but has allowed tenants of the El Morro trailer park to remain until this year.

DeVore has introduced legislation to extend the leases of 275 El Morro tenants from 10 to 30 years and to delay state plans to convert the private trailer park to public use. Although El Morro tenants have embraced him as their champion, he has said his support of them is based on budgetary concerns: The state doesn’t have enough money to convert the mobile home park into a campground.

Opponents of his measures, however, believe the bills are special-interest legislation designed to benefit DeVore’s financial backers -- including some El Morro residents.

But the legislator defends his latest effort as a way to ensure that state park rangers don’t benefit from decisions they help make. Given that rangers testified before the California Coastal Commission about the need to renovate Crystal Cove for public use, DeVore said, “it doesn’t seem appropriate that any government employee ... should benefit.”

Officials with the state Department of Parks and Recreation, however, defended the decision. Residents participating in public meetings about Crystal Cove requested that rangers live on-site to protect the cottages, said Roy Stearns, deputy director of communications for state parks. A parks plan updated in 2001 allows for as many as five of the cottages to be used for employee housing.

“We see nothing wrong with them living there,” Stearns said. “I think if there was no one living there, [the park would] be very vulnerable to theft of construction materials, vandalism of cottages and theft of historic property.”

DeVore disagreed that park rangers need to be living on-site but said that even if that was justified, the state should be able to collect more rent. He sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger two weeks ago alleging that Crystal Cove State Park Supt. Ken Kramer was using one of the renovated cottages while renting out his Corona del Mar home for several thousand dollars a month.

State parks officials then suggested that DeVore had violated the law by revealing where a peace officer lived.

DeVore said he had not been informed by state parks that his actions were unlawful and called the allegation a veiled attempt to shift the topic. “I get closer to discovering waste and fraud and abuse, and they shift the topic to ‘the assemblyman broke the law,’ ” he said.

“I’m incapable of violating the code because I don’t know what [Kramer’s] address is,” DeVore said. “I have no idea which of the 46 cottages he lives in. All I know is, they’re all beautiful, overlooking the ocean, for less than $150 a month.”

The park is undergoing an $8.6-million renovation. Twenty-two of its 46 cottages are expected to open to public use in the fall.

The site is serviced by a dirt road lined with construction materials. A refurbished cottage painted bright green stands next to others that are missing roofs or covered haphazardly with bits of plastic sheeting.Sea air appears to have taken its toll on many of the cottages -- several of which were in disrepair when the last residents were evicted in 2001. Rusted mailboxes teeter on poles; steepwooden staircases with steps missing have been cordoned off with yellow tape.

When the park opens in the fall, the rangers and the maintenance employee will move out of their current cottages and into three others at the southern edge of the park, Stearns said. Fire officials have ruled that those three are unsafe for public overnight stays because of limited access.

Kramer could not be reached for comment.

And Mike Tope, district superintendent for the Orange Coast District, which includes Crystal Cove, declined to talk about his employees’ personal finances.

Whether Kramer has a home in Corona del Mar “was not a consideration when we were putting people in these houses,” Tope said.

“The employees that live at the cottages were already assigned to the park and seemed the logical choice.”

Stearns said: “I hate to get into a contest with a legislator, but it sounds like they’re picking a park ranger as a scapegoat for trying to keep [tenants] living in a state park.

“If [Kramer] owns another house, that’s his business if he managed his finances in a way that is reasonable and prudent so that he can afford to keep that other house while he’s living in temporary housing. What’s wrong with that?” Stearns said.

“I don’t think we should penalize him for taking good care of his family.”