OC Blog

Electing the OCTA

Hat tip to our friends of The Buzz for mentioning our humble blog today.

At the same time, it’s necessary to respond to their swipe at my colleague Roscoe’s espousal of an elected OCTA board.

The Buzz points to OUSD trustee-elect Steve Rocco as if his election were somehow a refutation of making the OCTA board elected. Citing Rocco’s election doesn’t rise even remotely to the level of argument.  Indeed, he’s a fluke, the exception that proves the rule.

Other than the County of Orange, the OCTA probably impacts OC residents more directly than any other local agency. It collects a half-cent local sales tax, manages a budget of more than $1 billion, runs the bus system, builds and maintains freeways, streets and roads, operates MetroLink and wastes millions on CenterLine.

The board of the Municipal Water District of Orange County is elected, as are most members of the Orange County Water District Board of Directors. The anonymous platoons of local water and special districts have elected directors. Why should the OCTA Board of Directors – which is vastly more high-profile, influential and moneyed – be insulated from the voters whose money it spends and lives it dramatically affects?

Yes, OUSD voters have elected a bona fide kook to their Board of Trustees. But at least they have the option of un-electing him in four years, or recalling him if he proves to be unbearably or recklessly weird.  The voters have no such recourse should they disagree with how the OCTA Board of Directors’ infrastructure spending and planning decisions.

Here at OC Blog, we enjoy a good debate and welcome any dissenting points of view. I understand The Buzz was just trying to be funny, and Steve Rocco will be the butt of many jibes and jokes for some time to come.  But if pointing to Rocco and smirking, “See! See! That’s what you get by letting voters make the choices!” is the best argument that can be mustered in defense of an unelected OCTA Board, perhaps it is time to give some serious thought to including Roscoe’s proposal in any referendum re-authorizing Measure M.

Visit CaliforniaRepublic.org

The Golden State's premier political website and blog nerve center, California Republic, picked up my Bill Jones post today.  Many thanks!

It really is a tremendous site and on my daily must-read list.  Which is why we link to it here.  Please visit it often!

More from OC Weekly

The best article I have yet read on the now-infamous Steve Rocco.

Man, this dude is a kook. OUSD loses a trustee with a drinking problem, and acquires one with a sanity problem. The next four years should be interesting.

Over at OC Weekly...

Here's an excellent article by Gustavo Arellano on Art Leahy contract extension.

What would we do without the Weekly?

Whither Measure M?

So, only 46% of OC voters would vote to re-authorize Measure M, according to an new Cal State Fullerton Poll sponsored by the Orange County Business Council (I tried in vain to find it on OCBC's crappy website. Maybe e you'll have better luck).  That's 20 points short of the necessary two-thirds majority.

Man, I'll bet those numbers sent a chill through the collective spine of the OCTA leadership. And they're at odds with another Cal State Fullerton poll from late August showing 69% of Orange Countians supporting light rail.

Now, how do 69% of OC residents support a massively expensively light-rail system, yet only 46% support the sales tax necessary to fund such a system.

The obvious conclusion is this overwhelming support for CenterLine is ephemeral. It doesn't cost anything to tell a pollster you think it would be neat to have a subway system criss-crossing Orange County. But if you asked them to fork over more than $1 billion to build a choo-choo from the Civic Center to the outskirts of Irvine, you'll probably get a different answer.

In any case, this new poll doesn't bode well for CenterLine and its cadre of devotees at OCTA. The feds just pulled the plug on $50 to complete the system's design. The new OCTA chairman is Supervisor Bill Campbell, a confirmed opponent of the Folly Trolley. New board member Curt Pringle is philosophically opposed to CenterLine.

On the other hand, Cassie De Young lost her seat on the OCTA Board. She was one of the few board members who was not a CenterLine zombie, and had pushed to put it on the ballot.

Back to Measure M, however. Since it funds 67% of OCTA's budget, loss of Measure M would cripple the agency. Bill Campbell is correct when told the Left Angeles Times that Measure M is "Orange County's way of controlling it's own destiny for transportation."

As I have written in the past, one would think OCTA would do everything in its power to generate public support for Measure M's re-authorization. The fanatical devotion to building CenterLine will not build that support, and speaking as someone who supports re-authorizing Measure M, that fanaticism will doom M.

My guess it is Art Leahy and his cadre of rail-o-phile senior staff are unjustifiably mesmerized by polls showing big support for CenterLine -- a willful gullibility fed by their personal and professional stake building at least part of a rail system in OC. It's like that poster Fox Mulder had on his office wall in The X-Files: "I Want To Believe." The top staff at OCTA want to believe Orange Countians support CenterLine. The alternative is too much for them to bear.

I don't see much sign the nominal spokesgroup for the OC business community grasps this reality either.  Commenting on the new poll's anemic support for Measure M renewal, OCBC CEO (and former OCTA CEO) Stan Oftelie said:

"The apparent drop in Orange County support is puzzling in light of the extraordinary success of similar county ballot measures in San Bernardino, San Mateo and Costa Mesa [??? - ed] counties."

I think Stan meant Contra Costa County. Besides getting his counties mixed up, Oftelie seems to think your average Orange County resident spends any time thinking about transportation taxes in other California counties, let alone about whether or not they are extraordinarily successful. You ask OCers if they want to keep a tax, and they are likely to say, "No!"

Leahy displayed some glimmerings of understanding this when he commented:

"Voters in Orange County are conservative. they are a show-me county. they expect to know where their money is going before they approve it."

You're almost there, Art. It's only a short leap from there to understanding that if you tell Orange County taxpayers that there tax dollars are going to fund a hugely expensive light-rail system that will have virtually zero impact on freeway congestion, and will get more people out of OCTA buses than out of cars...let's just say that nowhere near a two-thirds majority is going to sign that check.

On the other hand, were OCTA to present them with some really bitchin' transportation infrastructure projects, like extending the 57 Freeway down to the 405, or double-decking freeways, then you might get them to go for it.  And when there's no place left to pour concrete and asphalt -- then go and ask taxpayers to fund CenterLine.

Maybe this is the advice OCTA is getting from California Strategies. Maybe not. it's what I'd tell them. But what do I know?

The League of the Ordinary and Wanting

All hail quasi-government.  Most voters never think about how the Orange County Transportation Authority board is chosen, I bet a large percentage think they vote for them on the ballot.  Well in today's LA Times, Dan Weikel's article sort of spells it out.

Just in case anyone cares, the now 18 member OCTA board (the eighteenth is a non-voting member who represents the Governor and five are the county sups) it's all done in literally the back room at Tustin City Hall when the Orange County League of Cities gathers.

It is about as far from democratic as you can get.  The meetings are even "conducted in the spirit of the open meeting act" but not really.  Its seems that while an issue was not on the agenda last week, Peter Herzog (Lake Forest's only openly bald council member) suggested that "...no one will protest the item being taken up without notice, so lets vote anyway."

Me thinks the OCTA board should be directly elected by the People.  While your at it, lets do the same with the OC Fire Authority and OC Sanitation District and the Vector Control Board and maybe even LAFCO (the Local Agency Formation Commission--another joyful example of the layers of unaccountable 'democratic leadership').

CRP Vice Chair Battle Taking Shape

READER ADVISORY: What follows is totally California Republican inside baseball of interest to only a tiny fraction of the state's population. Consider yourself warned.

The California Republican Party's February organizing convention is approaching, which means the biannual battle for CRP vice chair is getting under way. For the uninitiated, when CRP members vote for vice chairman, they're really voting on who will be the next party chairman. By custom, the vice chair virtually automatically ascends to chairmanship in two years. Don't ask me why we do it in this roundabout way -- we just do.

The front-runner is Ron Nehring, chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party. Nehring took over the SD GOP in July 2001, and proceeded to transform that faction-ridden organization into a potent political force for electing Republicans. His credentials and qualifications to run the CRP will tough for his rivals to match.

And who are Nehring's rivals? That's hard to say. Apparently, current Vice Chairman Mario Rodriguez had tried to recruit Orange County public affairs consultant Julie Vandermost to run for the post. Vandermost was a delegate to the national convention this year, and is the founder and president of the California Women's Leadership Conference (which started out as the Conservative Women's Leadership Conference - which itself was odd given the decidedly unconservative bent of its membership, who seem to be more Christy Cristich types).  Vandermost considered a run but ultimately declined -- probably concluding she was unlikely to best Nehring in what would be an expensive contest.

Word on the grapevine is that Ventura County GOP Leslie Cornejo is now planning to run. According to our sources, she has the distinction of being the only county chairman who supported Prop. 62 -- the Louisiana Primary initiative that would have eviscerated political parties by denying them the right to choose their nominees.

We'll keep you posted.

Thank You, Bill Jones

I'd like to thank Bill Jones, the GOP nominee against Barbara Boxer. I'd like to thank him for confirming my belief, formed the moment I learned he planned to challenge the unctuous Boxer, that he would win the nomination and proceed to run an abysmal general election campaign.

Jones not only fulfilled my expectations -- he exceeded them.  I can't remember a worse statewide race in a generation.  Jone's nomination should have been reported in Boxer's campaign reports as an in-kind contribution from California Republicans.

His awful candidacy also vindicates my vote for Rosario Marin in the primary.  While was definitely more moderate than Jones (no right-winger himself), at least she had vitality, belief in herself and the better fund-raising abilities than Jones.  She was weak on policy once she got past her talking points, but that could easily be remedied in the months before the media again focused on the general election. And in Ken Khachigian, she had a consultant who knows how to fight, and isn't afraid to.

Beside, Marin had a great story to tell, and could have cut into the Hispanic vote.   There was a rationale to her candidacy -- it made sense. There was no rationale to Jones candidacy other than Bill was looking for a new job. I don't know if she would have beaten Barbara Boxer, but I'm convinced she'd have given the old lefty a run for her money. Instead, thanks for Bill Jones zombie campaign, Boxer was the nation's top vote getter behind Bush and Kerry.

And while we're on the subject, the decision by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson to back Jones over former Wilson staffer Marin in the primary -- thereby severely crimping Marin's ability to raise money from the traditional donor community -- doesn't speak well of their political instincts. It's especially puzzling given the loyalty Wilson people show each other.  Marin loyally defended Wilson in the Spanish-language media for years -- no easy task. For that, ole Pete gave her the back of the hand. Perhaps he narcissistically believed what the California GOP needed was to nominate another boring white guy.  Or Perhaps it was a long overdue payback for Bill Jones role in dumping Ross Johnson as Assembly GOP leader back in 1991 and securing the six GOP votes necessary to pass Wilson's disastrous $8 billion tax increase.

Using the same judgment that led him to switch his support from George W. Bush to John McCain following McCain's big New Hampshire primary win in 2000, Jones believed it was smart for his cash-strapped campaign to pay $25,000 a month to campaign manager Bruce Nestande (whose duties no one could quite figure out). And why did Jones believe it was a good use of contributors dollars to pay the office manager, who had no previous campaign experience, $6,000 a month.

Multi-millionaire Jones, a multimillionaire who stands to make another $25 million from the merger of his business, made sure to re-pay himself a $350,000 campaign loan in the final weeks of the race -- the campaign equivalent of a do-not-resuscitate order. But Jones couldn't remember to pay his highly-qualified and respected field director -- to whom Jones still owes $20,000.

I could go on and on. And I probably should. Yes, the election ended two-weeks ago, but I didn't think it right for Bill Jones to slink off into the political sunset without at least some accounting for the disastrous ego trip know as the Bill Jones for U.S. Senate campaign.

Where's Larry?

Never has it felt so good to be so wrong. In spite of the conventional wisom of the OC intelligentsia, Larry Agran will not join his two amigos Miguel y Curt on the new-look OCTA Board. Do his city peers see something in him Irvine voters do not? Hmmmmm....

But what is good news for those who feared the enlarging of Ed Dornan's fundraising base is bad news for those opposed to the infamous Folly Trolley.

Here's how it looks for Centerline with the new-look OCTA Board. If you have another opinion, please opine. I hope to be proven wrong.

Confirmed Centerliners

Art Brown, Gary Monahan, Miguel Pulido, Tom Wilson, Lou Correa, Greg Winterbottom

Likely Centerliners

Richard Dixon, Cathy Green, Susan Ritschel

Confirmed Antis

Bill Campbell, Carolyn Cavecche, Chris Norby

Semi-Anti

Jim Silva

???

1st District Seat #2 - Garden Grove's Mark Rosen? What will Miguel's support cost?

Mike Duval - His Yorba Linda constituents are some of the most conservative in the County. Supporting Centerline now might just kill any dreams of future glory.

Public Member Seat #2 - With the pro-train majority in full effect, don't call it a comeback for Mike Ward. The irony is too much to bear, isn't it Larry?

Speaking of school board members...

Just a quick note about Steve Rocco, the Orange Unified School District Trustee-Elect who is the talk of the town.  It turns out that Rocco not only beat the favorite in the race, is a recluse, but is also a crackpot.

Rumor has it that at a 2002 mayoral debate (he ran against Mark "sometimes I forget my balls at home" Murphy) he showed up in fatigues and dark sunglasses all 'Ron Kovic In Born on the Fourth of July' style.