Metro Section
 

         El Toro Debacle at the Top
           Supervisors need not look any farther than their own group.
 

              The convincing passage of Measure F, the ballot initiative requiring that the El
         Toro airport proposal be put to voters, has left some county supervisors searching
         in recent weeks for answers on what it all means. Recently, they showed they
         wanted it both ways, voting to remain "neutral" on the measure at the same time
         they asked the courts to release the board from compliance with financial
         restrictions.
              No doubt there will be some questions about very specific consequences that
         need ironing out, such as the actual date the initiative takes effect. However, there is
         no need to search the Hall of Administration for scapegoats on the question of being
         ill-prepared to deal with all the ramifications of the measure. The supervisors need
         not look any farther than their own group. And until the matter of the measure's
         constitutionality is adjudicated, the board should comply cooperatively with its
         provisions.
              Recently, some of the supervisors were casting about for whether to blame
         County Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier or County Counsel Laurence M. Watson
         for ill-preparedness in dealing with the new law. Surely, the supervisors should have
         anticipated that the measure might pass, especially in view of widely available polling
         results. They should have requested that the administrators begin looking into the
         consequences of the measure.
              The reality is that the supervisorial majority of three that has been pushing the
         international airport proposal never signaled any intention from the beginning to look
         at alternatives to the big plan. It is precisely for this reason that it took South County
         cities to push for a nonaviation alternative proposal to be prepared several years ago.
         As we noted recently, the county has done precious little to anticipate the possibility
         that it will have to come up with a plan to address the future of John Wayne
         Airport, which has a cap on passengers and flights that will be lifted in 2005.
              On that point, the supervisors have poorly served Newport Beach, the very
         constituency that most ardently has sought an El Toro airport as an alternative to the
         expansion of John Wayne Airport. The best the county has been able to do is to
         float an expansion plan for John Wayne Airport in the environmental impact report
         that was so wildly out-sized that its only conceivable aim was to scare Newport
         Beach and Costa Mesa. It has yet to take a measured look at the airport's future and
         anticipate the possibility that El Toro might not go through. In fact, county
         leadership has been so absent that, ironically, it has been the anti-El Toro group that
         made overtures to Newport Beach, where anxiety understandably is stirring about
         the fate of John Wayne Airport. A lot of time has been lost, and now the exploration
         is coming from the ground up, not the top down; former Newport Beach Mayor
         Tom Edwards has suggested that there may be common ground on county airport
         capacity.
              As for accountability on the consequences of the ballot initiative, the supervisors
         should not blame the county administrators. There is a strong county executive
         system, to be sure. But the El Toro question is the most important land issue facing
         the county since World War II, and the biggest public policy question since the
         bankruptcy.
              Whatever they think of Mittermeier's role in the architecture of the dual airport
         system, the buck stops with them. Now that they have been handed a defeat, they
         can't say the underlings haven't kept them informed. Now that taxpayers
         successfully sued to get reimbursement for the costs incurred in challenging sloppy
         environmental impact work, it's high time the county took a more realistic approach
         to building consensus for future base reuse.
              The supervisors have made El Toro the centerpiece of their entire government
         effort in recent years, to the detriment of full attention to other policy matters. They
         are responsible for proposing a flight plan that left experts in disbelief, and which
         now has cost precious credibility that might have gone toward a more scaled-down
         and politically realistic airport system to serve future aviation demands.
              In the end, democracy can't work in anybody's favor if it isn't based on a
         forthright public conversation. It's past the time when the supervisors should start
         conducting it.