Developer Snubs Secrecy Route in Fighting Slow-Growth Issue

A representative of a major Orange County development firm said Thursday that the company no longer will contribute money to a nonprofit corporation involved in the effort to defeat the slow-growth initiative on the June 7 county ballot.

Santa Margarita Co. spokeswoman Diane Gaynor said the firm gave $5,000 to the Transportation League, a new nonprofit corporation, after receiving a letter from the League in mid-February saying the League’s purpose was to inform the public about the negative impacts of Measure A, the slow-growth ballot measure.

Gaynor said the Santa Margarita Co. would withhold further support from the league in response to a Times article Thursday about a Feb. 23 fund-raising solicitation letter written by John Simon, treasurer of the anti-initiative Citizens for Traffic Solutions.

Letter on Secrecy

Simon’s letter urged publicity-shy financial backers to use the Transportation League as a vehicle for keeping their contributions secret.

The Transportation League was created in February by former Brea City Manager Wayne Wedin, who said the corporation will conduct polls and compile research, but not take a position on the ballot measure because that would jeopardize the league’s bid for tax-exempt status.

In his Feb. 23 letter to potential supporters, Newport Beach attorney John Simon stated that the Transportation League could be used as a “vehicle” for keeping contributors’ names secret. Simon’s letter also solicited support for his own group, Citizens for Traffic Solutions, which--unlike the Transportation League--is a registered political action committee.

Finance Disclosure Rules

However, state Fair Political Practices Commission officials said this week that a nonprofit corporation is not exempt from mandatory campaign finance disclosure requirements.

“We plan to go ahead and make our future contributions to Citizens for Traffic Solutions,” said Gaynor, because “we want to be honest about this and we’re not trying to hide anything.”

Wedin did not return a reporter’s telephone calls Thursday.

Some developers contacted Thursday defended Simon’s Feb. 23 letter, while others did not.

“His (Simon’s) concern probably was that his campaign should not be perceived as a builders’ campaign, that it should be seen as a grass-roots campaign,” Mission Viejo Co. president Harvey Stearn said.

“But there are good reasons why builders should support it, and I’m sure they will. I know we are,” Stearn said. “Simon’s letter was probably not a good idea because there’s no way to really hide that kind of thing. But I know that when a builder (contributes money or) speaks out against something, most people will believe it to be self-serving whether it’s true or not.”

Stearn said his company had not decided how much money it will contribute to Citizens for Traffic Solutions.

W. Richard Oakes Jr., marketing director of Birtcher, a commercial development firm, said of Simon’s pitch: “There’s no need for that. I think John Q. Public knows that builders and developers don’t like slow growth and will be fighting this thing, so what’s to be gained by trying to hide it?”

Oakes said it was naive of Simon to assume that the letter would not surface publicly. “I personally believe that anything I write is going to show up where I don’t want it to, so I always make sure that it’s OK for it show up there.”

Kathryn Thompson of A & C Properties said: “There are a lot of people who don’t want to be identified--I’ve found that to be true even in charity work, partly because they don’t want to be hounded by 5,000 other causes. But I don’t know enough about the situation surrounding the (Simon’s) letter to be able to comment on it.”

Irvine Co. Vice President Larry Thomas said he was “too unfamiliar with both the letter and recent FPPC rulings” to be able to comment.