Politics : Airport Lawsuit Weighed

The politics of airport-noise lawsuits will be a hot topic when Newport Beach City Council members meet in executive session Monday morning to consider filing a suit to block the expansion of John Wayne Airport, approved Wednesday by county supervisors.

The expansion plan permits up to 55 jet departures daily, beginning April 1, and construction of a new 255,000-square-foot terminal to replace the present, 29,000-square-foot facility.

Proponents of legal action cite the city’s 1982 court victory, which led to the current limit of 41 daily departures. That year, a Superior Court judge declared that the county’s environmental impact report on an earlier expansion plan had not adequately addressed alternatives to the project.

Confident of EIR

County supervisors contend that the new environmental impact report is complete enough to withstand any legal challenge.

But some city officials and homeowners’ groups believe the new report has many holes.

Clarence Turner and Barbara Lichman, officers of the Airport Working Group, a homeowners organization, called a press conference Friday at Newport Beach City Hall to announce that their group has hired the San Francisco law firm of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger to seek an injunction against the county.

Such legal action will be taken once supervisors certify the expansion project’s environmental impact documents (the board tentatively accepted them Wednesday), according to Turner.

But the debate is focused now on whether legal action by Newport Beach city officials is wise politically, not on whether they can win in court.

Hollow Victory?

“You either sue the county and risk everything, or you try to work things out over time, attempting to make the best of the situation and remain on speaking terms with everyone,” Councilwoman Jackie Heather said Thursday.

Council members Evelyn Hart and Heather, as well as several county supervisors, have said that the city’s 1982 court victory may have been a hollow one.

“I’m not sure that our lawsuit back then didn’t cause the animosity that ruined the chance we had for negotiation, and cause the efforts of the Blue Ribbon Committee to fail,” Heather said.

Heather was referring to a committee appointed by the Board of Supervisors which, three years ago, recommended Santiago Canyon as a site for a new airport.

Heather and board members also have said that legal action poisons the atmosphere, as was the case when the city filed a lawsuit last year in an unsuccessful bid to block construction of the county’s new airport parking lot, north of the San Diego Freeway.

They said the parking-lot suit was partly responsible for the board’s hostile reaction to an agreement proposed last year, under which Newport Beach would have refrained from further litigation over airport expansion if the county permanently limited departures to 55 a day and had promised to begin work on a new airport site within three years.

Ken Delino, assistant to the city manager, has said that Newport Beach had no choice but to sue over the parking lot because county supervisors refused to sit down and discuss the issue with city officials. Moreover, he said, the county already had made improvements at the airport that the city considered illegal, and the city had to “hold the line.”

“We had no choice,” Delino said. “Our backs were up against the wall.”

“The problem is that the board is listening to its own lawyers too much,” Delino added. “They want to go to court and beat the pants off of us. Don’t you think they relish the idea, after what we did to them in 1982?

“This whole thing could be worked out if the supervisors would sit down face-to-face with council members, without any lawyers.”

Board members said they were more impressed with the city’s public-relations campaign this time than they were with the threatening legal posture the city took in 1982. That PR campaign, they said, made them more receptive to reopening the search for a new airport site.

“They got to a lot of people,” Supervisor Harriett Wieder said. “They worked very hard and they were much more conciliatory this time.”

And Supervisor Bruce Nestande added, “Threatening lawsuits all the time doesn’t work on us. They’re perceived as political blackmail. Even some of the lobbying that was going on behind the scenes was perceived, somewhat, as political blackmail.”

Still, some Newport Beach residents say they don’t believe the city won enough concessions from the board to justify conciliation.

Lichman praised Nestande’s candor, saying Nestande told her “point blank” that the city “got nothing” of substance in Wednesday’s vote. According to Lichman, Nestande said he could not believe how his fellow board members dressed up the decision to make it look “like chocolate cake.”

Indeed, during discussions before the board voted Wednesday, Wieder and Supervisor Thomas F. Riley wanted to strike all references to the second phase of the expansion project, which involves 73 daily departures and a larger terminal after 1990. According to one board member, who requested anonymity, the idea was to “avoid rubbing Newport Beach’s nose in it.”

Michael Gatzke, the county’s airport counsel, successfully urged the board during an executive session to include the 73-flight, Phase 2 project in the board resolution that was finally adopted. He cited the need for adequate public disclosure and legal protection, board sources said.

Nestande, expanding on his “chocolate cake” remark, said it would be “flippant” to say that Newport Beach got nothing from Wednesday’s airport expansion vote.

“If it weren’t for Newport Beach and people like Barbara Lichman, who have fought the airport all these years,” Nestande said, “they would probably be saddled with 93 daily flights by now . . . . Without people like that, John Wayne Airport would not be on the leading edge of new, quieter technology.”

And so, to keep up the pressure and protect homeowners’ interests, whether it’s politically wise or not, Lichman is among those people saying, “See you in court.”