South County Angered Over El Toro Snub

Mission Viejo officials were stunned and angered recently when a list proposing who should help decide the future development of the nearby El Toro Marine air base failed to include any representatives from South County’s biggest city.

“We were aghast,” City Councilwoman Sharon Cody said. “We could not believe it happened. Plane flights go right over our city. To completely ignore us explains how much the county staff and the Board of Supervisors are out of touch with South County issues.”

Once again, as local officials viewed it, South County was the poor stepchild, never invited to the ball.

Despite a 20-year growth boom that has swollen the once-rural South County to 1 million residents, leaders are quick to point out that never--not even today--has a state legislator, member of Congress, or Orange County supervisor representing South County actually lived between Irvine and San Clemente.

And now, after years of pent-up political frustration, the lack of representation on the El Toro Advisory Commission has become a rallying cry to many South County officials who claim plans for the 4,700-acre base scheduled for closure under federal cutbacks is a key to the future of the entire area.

“It’s the biggest issue south Orange County faces going into the next century,” said Patricia C. Bates, mayor pro tem of Laguna Niguel, whose plea for South County representation nearly won her a state Assembly seat last November.

“I have it mentioned to me everywhere I go,” she said. “The constituency here needs to know where they are at. They are not represented.”

Only an uproar by a united front of South County officials last week saved the area from getting only three of 17 seats on the commission being formed by the county Board of Supervisors.

Opposition won a two-week delay on selections to the commission, which will recommend future uses for the military base.

“That was a slap in the face of the people of the South County by the people who advised the board,” Bates said. “We have to go in there on our hands and knees and say: ‘Please let us be a part of this.’ ”

Jack Wagner, a county staff analyst assigned to the base closure issue, said a diverse group of interests deserve seats at the commission table and no final decisions have been made. Ultimately, Wagner predicted, South County will be happy with the representation it gets.

“It’s a very tough process trying to strike a balance between the county’s responsibility toward regional interests and its responsibility toward the powers in the local communities,” Wagner said. “When the board makes its final reports, I think there will be satisfaction for sure from the South County, and North County too.”

But local politicians say the lack of clout is an old problem stemming from the days when South County was a sparse patchwork of small, rural communities, many of which have become cities in recent years.

Less than a decade ago the five new South County cities--Mission Viejo, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Hills and Lake Forest--were still unincorporated and tossed together as a part of the county’s largest supervisorial district, the sprawling 318-square-mile Fifth District.

“Up until the last few years, the South County has not had the city council people and a whole host of city officials to lobby for their interests,” said Howard Adler of Laguna Hills, a longtime South County resident and former chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party.

“Basically, when people think of the South County, they think of big developers and they rarely get past the Santa Margarita Co. and the Birtchers (a construction company),” he added. “That creates a problem.”

Despite his political prominence for nearly 30 years, people are still surprised to discover he lives south of the “Y,” Adler said.

“People scratch their head and say ‘I didn’t know you lived down there,’ ” said Adler, who owns the 300,000-square-foot Plaza de la Paz commercial center in Laguna Niguel.

South County is part of the vast 5th District, which has always been represented by powerful residents of Newport Beach.

Southern officials complain that that is not likely to change because the heir apparent to Supervisor Thomas F. Riley of Newport Beach is another resident of that city, Marian Bergeson, who is leaving the state Senate.

While Riley has plenty of friends and supporters throughout South County, the lack of a representative at the county level who actually lives “below the Y” makes an important difference, locals claim.

“I think you have to be a part of the fabric of the community to be really sensitive to the issues,” San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Gary L. Hausdorfer said. “You have to live it and breathe it and talk to your neighbors about it.”

Officials say the lack of a local advocate shows in many ways. One of the most evident has been the decade-old struggle of the 30,000-student Capistrano Unified School District to pull itself up from the bottom levels of the state funding.

The sprawling district, which stretches from San Clemente to Laguna Niguel to Rancho Santa Margarita, receives the least per-student funding from the state of all 12 unified school districts in Orange County and the least of the 21 largest districts in the state. Local officials have lobbied for years to change that status, but to no avail, said Carleen Chandler, the district’s assistant superintendent of business and fiscal services.

“It is true that the fact we do not have someone who truly understands our local issues, who has children in our schools and understands the district’s rapid population growth has probably hurt us,” Chandler said.

The recent decision to locate a much-sought-after federal courthouse building in Santa Ana, over a federal General Services Agency recommendation for Laguna Niguel, is another example of faint political influence.

Local officials had pushed for an expansion of the Chet Holifield Federal Building for the courthouse and won some backing but ultimately lost the decision.

“We saw that as a real opportunity,” Bates said. “It would have brought a national importance to our area and given us more attention.”

Perhaps the issue that really raises South County’s hackles over lack of representation is transportation. “Roads first!” became a rallying cry for local leaders fed up with the high density of homes being built throughout South County without roads to support them.

The congestion on the local highways that followed the development has plagued South County commuters since the late 1970s.

“A more adequate regional transportation system is now coming into place,” said Hausdorfer, who is chairman of the Orange County Transportation Commission. “But I believe if you would have had someone a little more sensitive to the South County’s problems, you might have gotten a little more on the front end. If government is going to approve a project, it’s wrong to have the transportation network approved piecemeal.”

Still, South County’s leaders are counting the ever-increasing number of registered voters and waiting for the day that the political dynamics are different.

“The numbers are changing,” Laguna Hills City Councilwoman Melody Carruth said. “We ought to be able to elect anybody we want to that (supervisorial) seat, but so far nobody has been able to step forward.”

Carruth acknowledges that few people are willing to challenge Bergeson, who has declared she wants to finish a long political career in the county office.

But Carruth suggests the El Toro base issue may finally crystallize the issue of lack of representation and bring together a strong South County political contingent.

“I think El Toro will shake up the county picture,” Carruth said. “Local control is what shaped the South County incorporation drives. This may galvanize us. . . . Out of this may emerge some strong leaders.”

Bates, whose defeat last November left still bitter feelings among her supporters, agrees.

“This is the one. This is the big one,” she said. “I think our constituency will now see what this means. We told them about it, but there is nothing better than a lesson learned. You see it and you feel it.”

Cogitation Without Representation

South County officials say a tentative roster of the El Toro Advisory Commission, which will study use of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, has crystallized their old complaint: Their area lacks representation. Ten elected officials represent South County as part of their districts, but none lives in Orange County south of the El Toro “Y.”

Officeholder Home District Rep. Christopher Cox Newport Beach 47th Rep. Ron Packard Oceanside 48th Assemblyman Gil Ferguson Newport Beach 70th Assemblyman Mickey Conroy Orange 71st Assemblyman Bill Morrow Oceanside 73rd State Sen. John R. Lewis Orange 33rd State Sen. Marian Bergeson Newport Beach 35th State Sen. Bill Craven Carlsbad 38th Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez Orange Third Supervisor Thomas F. Riley Newport Beach Fifth

Source: Offices of Christopher Cox, Marian Bergeson