If Tustin Sues, Lockyer Says He Will Back Davis

Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said Tuesday he will defend Gov. Gray Davis should Tustin sue over legislation the governor signed that orders the city to give 100 acres on a closed Marine base to two Santa Ana school districts.

“Now that this measure has been debated by the Legislature and enacted, I hope all parties will make serious good-faith efforts to fully comply with its provisions,” Lockyer said in a statement about AB 212, which the governor signed into law late Monday.

Tustin has threatened to sue the state for interfering with federal law, which gives the city the authority to decide what becomes of land at the 1,600-acre former helicopter base. It was closed in July 1999. Now that the governor has signed the bill, city officials say there is no longer room for negotiation.

“We have no choice but to turn to the courts, where we trust that reason and rationality will prevail over politics,” Tustin Mayor Tracy Wills Worley said Tuesday.

The bill orders Tustin to give 100 acres to the Santa Ana Unified and Rancho Santiago community college districts, which are two of California’s most overcrowded. Tustin’s redevelopment plan, approved by the Navy in May, gives land for schools to the Tustin and Irvine districts, as well as the South Orange County Community College District.

In signing the bill, Davis becomes the nation’s first governor to intervene in the decision of a local base redevelopment agency, according to the National Assn. of Installation Developers, a trade group of government and private businesses involved in base redevelopment.

The group, based in Washington, D.C., urged Davis in a letter to veto the bill by Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) and Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana). The law sets a dangerous precedent of states overriding decisions of local agencies on the fate of bases, association deputy director Tim Ford said Tuesday.

“If you start having this happen across the country, it could degrade the community planning process” outlined in the federal Base Reuse and Closure Act, Ford said. “All this will do in the end is delay the process for many, many years.”

Lawsuit threats and legislative intervention have put the fate of the Tustin base on the same course that has embroiled the former El Toro Marine base, where nearby residents have fought plans for an international airport for seven years.

“This is El Toro II,” said Fred Smoller, political science professor at Chapman University. “You have two passionate sides with resources and a lot at stake. Both sides feel unfairly maligned.”

Davis signed the bill after intense lobbying from Democratic and Latino legislators and groups. They argued that the Santa Ana districts had been approved to get base land in 1994 by the federal Department of Education. A change in base-closure law gave Tustin authority over redevelopment, and the two districts were excluded from the city’s final plan.

However, a year ago, Santa Ana Unified and Rancho officials asked state and federal Democratic lawmakers to intervene in Tustin’s plan for a new community of homes and businesses at the former base. Two Latino-rights groups joined the districts in suing Tustin in April, alleging that its redevelopment plan violated civil-rights laws by penalizing minority students.

Tustin countered that giving the land to Santa Ana would destroy the economic viability of the base reuse plan, which relies on selling the property to commercial developers to help pay for roads, sewers and other improvements.

But in May, the city offered to give 22 acres to Santa Ana Unified and 15 acres to Rancho Santiago elsewhere on the base, as well as cash and tax revenue worth $78 million. Santa Ana balked after a consultant said the land might be too contaminated to build a school. Tustin officials insisted the land was either clean enough or would be cleaned sufficiently to build there--assurances the school districts claim weren’t good enough.

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