Editorial

They have to be joking.

That was our initial response when we learned the South County-based

El Toro Reuse Planning Authority officials had directed their lawyers to

begin a lawsuit against Newport Beach for undertaking a campaign against

the Great Park.

The Great Park, or what is now being called the Orange County Central

Park, is being pitched by South County cities as an alternative to

building a new county airport at the now-closed El Toro Marine base.

Newport Beach leaders, of course, have argued strongly for an El Toro

airport to be built to take the pressure off of federal and county

officials to expand John Wayne.

The debate has turned into an all-out war, and no one expects that the

battle tactics will be pretty.

But this latest move by the planning authority is downright dripping

in hypocrisy.

What the South County anti-airport leaders are saying is that public

money cannot be spent on campaigns for or against initiatives.

But isn’t that exactly what South County cities have been doing so

far?

Over the last three years, the city of Irvine, to use one example, has

spent $5 million in the promotion of alternative uses of the closed El

Toro Marine base. And one of those uses is the creation of a central

park.

And what about all of the public funds that the anti-airport leaders

used to pitch Measure F, the now unconstitutional initiative that would

have required a two-thirds vote for airports, jails and landfills?

How was that not the same thing?

Nary a day can go by without seeing some sort of television commercial

on local cable stations pitching the serenity and family atmosphere that

a large central park would provide, with, conveniently, no mention of the

exorbitant price tag.

That’s exactly what Newport Beach’s television commercial campaign

will do -- provide the other side of the story. It will tell residents

just how costly and unrealistic a central park would be.

We don’t dispute that the leaders of the South County cities have

every right to make their pitch to the public on how El Toro should be

redeveloped.

Where we disagree is when they try to stand in the way when our local

leaders try to do the same thing.

The anti-airport forces should end this legal charade immediately

because their attempts to call the kettle black is laughable.

We just don’t find it very funny.