El Toro’s Deep Divide

The presumption that the new Bush administration will be El Toro airport-friendly has encouraged supporters of the county’s base reuse plan. This has been a season of favorable news for the pro-airport forces, beginning with the overturning of Measure F, which would have required two-thirds voter approval of an airport. A Los Angeles judge threw out the initiative at the end of last year.

Last month, airport planners received approval of a contested 1996 environmental review of the airport plan from another judge who previously had found it so deficient. This clearance occurred while the county looks ahead to approval of another environmental review in the fall for a plan that reduces the proposed airport to 28.8 million passengers a year.

South County airport opponents took initial steps last week to reverse the Measure F ruling which was so unfavorable to their cause, by asking the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana to review the case. They plan also to go back to the ballot box to seek the overturning of the narrowly approved 1994 initiative Measure A, which zoned the base for an airport, and led to the crucial removal of South County cities from direct representation on the Local Redevelopment Authority.

Still, while the tide has been running with the pro-airport side, there remain potent and unresolved issues at the heart of this prolonged struggle that have to do with perceptions of community disenfranchisement. It is now one of the basic themes of this long-running story that the county consistently avoids telling the truth and it stretches the rules, unless hauled into court. All of this has led to the hardening of opposition to an airport when the facts come out.

The environmental impact report case, which appeared to be a county “victory,” illustrates the point. This turns out to be no routine environmental review process under federal base reuse deliberations, where the intent might be to find a project that is the “right fit” or to build consensus by explaining the effect a big project would have on a community. This is not a county government that has suspended judgment while gathering information.

Rather, the pro-airport majority on the Board of Supervisors regards environmental review as simply a hurdle to be cleared toward a foregone conclusion. What the judge said this time around was that, yes, the county finally was saying how much pollution this airport really could cause. On the question of playing by the rules, the county last week lost the use of outside counsel, after being challenged for skirting state requirements on hiring authorization.

This state of affairs sets the stage for the challenge that will play out in the old Santa Ana appeals courthouse. Look for the Measure F forces to argue that the power of citizen initiative is a fundamental protection against a legislative authority gone haywire. There likely will be an appeal made to precedent on the review of general plans by communities.

The lower court judge properly addressed the authority of elected officials to make land-use decisions, a point we discussed when Measure F came along. But his opinion left other courts to resolve the question of what might happen if legislative authority were abused.

The normal remedy for unresponsive officials, “throwing the rascals out” at election time, arguably is unavailable at least to those with an immediate geographical interest in El Toro. That’s because the pro-airport majority is elected in districts with boundaries beyond the reach of that constituency.

Add to this mix a concern we have raised, the integrity of a federal land-use decision at the heart of the base reuse process. What the county got was the disenfranchisement of the most affected communities by the reconfiguration of the Local Redevelopment Authority after the passage of Measure A in 1994. These are the very citizens who can’t vote on supervisors who, as it happens, regard voters as the enemy and have adopted a bunker mentality toward them. This has left the county with what essentially is a top-down process for deciding what happens to recycled military land. The Orange County-based appeals court probably won’t be as inattentive to these nuances as the lower court was, whatever it finally decides.

It could get a lot more interesting before it’s over. If the pro-airport people win the next rounds, they still have the colossal public acceptance problem. It’s fueled by the fact that the county isn’t leveling with the people it purports to represent. The Bush administration may prove airport-friendly, and the local push to build is sure to find encouragement in the national search for new runway capacity. But in Orange County, the FAA should hold community hearings, and it’s time for the county to be forthright about John Wayne Airport plans and how an El Toro airport actually would operate.