1989 Legislative Session: The Final Hours : No Important Measures Adopted by Lawmakers : SLOW GROWTH

The 1989 legislative session ended with little action on a topic that seemed hot just a few months ago--community growth management.

After several years of furious battling over city and county initiatives, leaders of the slow-growth movement had said they would move their campaign to the state capital, in a search for regional or statewide solutions to air pollution, traffic congestion and other growth-related problems.

Hearings were held, reports were written and more than 50 bills on the subject were introduced by various legislators. But, in the end, only a handful of relatively meaningless measures were passed.

Bills Defeated, Delayed

Legislation that would have established statewide growth standards or established regional bodies with sweeping powers to plan growth either were defeated or were put off for further study.

Meanwhile, local governments continued to depend heavily on builder fees to finance needed roads, schools, sewers and other infrastructure.

Fees on a new single-family house now average more than $15,000 in some areas of the state. This has helped to push the statewide median house price to $202,650, a figure that only 16% of California households can afford, according to the California Assn. of Realtors.

In a series of interviews, legislators, staff members and experts of various kinds attributed the lack of significant growth-management legislation to a weak effort by slow-growth advocates, skillful lobbying by the development industry and increasing evidence that local governments are trying to cope with growth problems, among other reasons.

Most of the leaders of grass-roots, slow-growth organizations failed to appear in Sacramento.

“They were not visible, they were not players,” said Peter M. Detwiler, consultant to the Senate Local Government Committee, which handled much of the growth-management legislation.

“Those local initiative groups had a great opportunity to participate in the legislative process this year but they never showed up,” said Madelyn Glickfeld, a Los Angeles planning consultant.

Weary of Battle

Some may have been weary of battle, especially after suffering defeats at the hands of well-financed developer campaigns in Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties last year.

“Those initiative campaigns wore down the citizen groups tremendously,” said Joseph E. Bodovitz, president of the California Environmental Trust, “and they felt they got run over by a builders’ bulldozer.”

But Don Collin, lobbyist for the Building Industry Assn., offered another explanation. “There was no constituency for those bills,” Collin said. “This was a classic example of Tip O’Neill’s statement that all politics is local . . . growth is an issue that depends on local dynamics and a local set of factors.”

While supporters of growth controls may have been inactive in Sacramento, Collin and other lobbyists for builders and developers were not.

“The BIA has a lot of influence,” said Casey Sparks, consultant to the Assembly Local Government Committee. “They blocked most of our bills,” referring to a growth-management legislative package that was proposed by Assemblyman Dominic L. Cortese (D-San Jose), the committee chairman.

Some observers wondered if the Legislature is capable of dealing with the kinds of major changes that supporters of regional or statewide growth controls were seeking.

“The Legislature is not set up to deal with this kind of issue,” Glickfeld said. “It cuts across too many existing committees. They would only deal with it in case of a great disaster.”

“And you have a governor who doesn’t care about these issues,” she added.

Treat Issue Seriously

Another important reason for the failure of growth-management legislation is that more cities and counties are beginning to treat the issue seriously, reducing the need for statewide action.

“My sense is that you’re seeing (local) government responding to this issue,” said Mark Pisano, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

After Measure A, a countywide slow-growth initiative, was defeated in June, 1988, the Orange County Board of Supervisors proceeded to approve a growth-management plan that contains many of Measure A’s provisions. Still others will become law if voters approve a half-cent sales tax increase that will be on the ballot in November.

Growth-management plans also are being produced in Riverside and San Diego counties, as well as in other cities and counties throughout the state.

The California League of Cities and the County Supervisors Assn. are putting together a joint proposal, and other planning efforts, such as the Los Angeles 2000 organization, have growth control elements.

“We lost but we won, I guess you could say,” said Tom Rogers, one of the organizers of last year’s unsuccessful Orange County slow-growth initiative. “It’s kind of like the Japanese after they signed the surrender on the (battleship) Missouri--look at ‘em now!”

Even though growth management as such fared poorly in the Legislature, several measures that did pass contain key growth-control provisions.

Most important is the “congestion management” portion of the 10-year, $18.5-billion transportation program that will go into effect if voters agree to lift the state spending limit in June, 1990.

The combination of this legislation, which was authored by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), and the new controls planned by the South Coast Air Quality Management District “could have a considerable impact on growth management,” consultant Glickfeld said.

Detwiler, the Senate committee consultant, noted that legislation aimed at “specific topic areas,” such as traffic congestion or air quality or solid waste, was more successful than the broad-brush growth-management bills.

But that does not mean that slow-growth supporters have abandoned the idea of statewide solutions. “We’ll be back,” Rogers said. ‘The sentiment is still there.”