South County airport money should be audited

William Kearns

As a resident of Costa Mesa, I take great interest in the

activities of Newport Beach. The article on Councilman John

Heffernan’s curiosity about the expenditure of $3.6 million allocated

for El Toro airport education raises a lot more questions than it

answers (“Airport spending questioned,” Aug. 14).

For example, although $3.63 million was authorized for citizen

education, only one third of it was spent. Why? How about an

accounting of the funds spent to lobby for extension of the John

Wayne settlement agreement?

Regardless of what the pro-airport groups said in defense of their

expenditures, “some” say Newport Beach taxpayers deserve a line-item

accounting of these expenses and “others” say the grant never should

have been issued. When I see “some say” and “others say” in an

accusatory article, I see the anonymous “they.” Who are “they” and

what is their motivation for saying anything?

Heffernan said, “This thing hasn’t smelled right from the

beginning.”

The article further goes on to quote Meg Walters (spokesperson for

the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority) as being glad that Newport

Beach is having the audit. Talk about bad smells -- South County

spent more than $45 million for their brainwashing “educational”

effort to try to convince all of Orange County about the dangers and

negatives that would result if El Toro is reopened. The firm Faubel

and Waters received $600,000 a year for a number of years, plus $3

million per year for advertising, thus profiting from that

$45-million expenditure.

The city of Irvine also spent $600,000 per year on a similar

effort and an additional $5 million per year for at least two years.

Where is the line-item accounting of the expenditures of South County

and the planning authority? After all, South County did its

electioneering with public money and maybe help from the developers

who want to build on the 14,000-acre buffer zone.

It’s possibly an unfair inference, but from the tone of the

article one could conclude that Heffernan is more sympathetic to the

planning authority and South County than to Newport.

* WILLIAM KEARNS is a Costa Mesa resident.