A challenge for Greenlight

I am responding to the commentary printed Oct. 14, “Fighting foolish growth,” written by Greenlight proponents Phil Arst and John Fransen.

As the mayor and a member of the Newport Beach City Council for nearly five years, and as one who first ran with a Greenlight endorsement, I disagree with several points made in the commentary, and I similarly disagree with the other ongoing public finance initiative.

In my time on the council, I have not observed our City Council lopsidedly favor the so-called pro-development forces in our city, nor would I label our City Council dysfunctional as the commentary does.

To me, behind both the newest Greenlight initiative and also the public finance initiative is the same sad assumption: We cannot trust our elected officials to do the job the voters elected them to do. As a result, residents must withhold powers from the council so they can make the final decisions.

I first ran for City Council because I wanted to serve our fine city. No one pressed me to run for public office or to push a particular agenda. No political consultant schooled me about how to get elected. I used only family savings to pay election expenses -- more than $35,000 in two elections. I came to Greenlight in 2000 and was only endorsed by Greenlight in the late days of that campaign.

Yes, I have been on the opposite side of many City Council votes during my time in office. Was it frustrating? Yes it was, and often times it still is.

But simply, from the first day, I accepted that frustration as the basic rule that governs our entire national, state and local elected representative system of government: First the voters elect the officeholders; then the officeholders (by majority vote), make decisions. If you don’t like the decisions, then recall or don’t reelect the decision-makers. Those rules have held up during natural disasters, poverty, wars, great hardship of many types, economic depressions, panics and loss of life.

But this concept of representative government itself is under attack in our prosperous city, led mostly by those who have run for City Council and have been rejected at the polls.

My advice to the backers of the new Greenlight initiative, and also to those who favor the public finance initiative, is this: Don’t hobble or permanently change the elected representative system of governance in Newport Beach by initiative -- instead, get your candidates elected.

There will be five City Council seats up in November 2006 -- a new voting majority is ready for you to take. Find, school and groom good, electable candidates for each seat. Support them with good facts and an active, truthful debate. Then get them elected.

If you are successful next November, then you are playing by our historical and proven governing rules of representative government. Then you can attempt to control and dictate how your newly elected officeholders vote -- instead of creating the perception, as you do now, that the present City Council members are inept, pawns of developers, on the take, or whatever other convenient but misleading label you choose to use to demean those now in service of our city. If you disagree with those who you have elected, throw them out of office and elect someone you do agree with.

It’s difficult enough managing home and work while being in public office. Add that to the vilification thrown at the average City Council member, along with the turmoil, cost and stress of an election, and it’s no surprise that we get so few qualified candidates to run for office in our city.

I also question the initiative proponents’ logic that asserts that Newport Beach’s 60,000-plus registered voters will know better than their elected officeholders and their related appointed commissioners how to decide complicated issues.

Yes, our 60,000-plus registered voters are qualified -- assuming they have the time and if they put in the effort -- to opine on issues the City Council now decides. But most don’t have the time, and very few will put in the required effort.

How many would invest the hours to digest the inches of paperwork, reports and schedules, and also hear and participate in the debate that takes place when that written material is discussed in a public setting?

Simply put, if either or both of these pending initiatives pass, our registered voters will be asked to vote on decisions when they know only a tiny part of the detail, debate and impact that their elected officeholders have when making those same decisions. More likely in the voting booth, more than a few voters will rely on misleading partial truths of political ads from either side to make their decision.

Further, we all know that when people don’t have time to learn about something, they tend to vote “no” -- because that’s the safe vote. Hence, whether the issue is a Hoag Hospital expansion or new live-work housing units in the airport area, odds are, a busy, now expanded, 60,000-person-strong City Council will vote no.

Finally, the Greenlight-led attack on the general plan update is just wrong. While mayor, I have promised repeatedly that the general plan will be subject to a vote of our residents in November 2006 -- the same date the new City Council majority will be elected. Before that occurs, almost four years of work, hundreds of meetings (including many with the general plan update committee, composed of 35 public members, almost all of whom are residents with many drawn from Greenlight), more than $2 million of city funds and an untold amount of city staff time and attention will have been focused on putting that general plan update in final form for all our residents to approve or reject.

Assuming a citywide vote of approval of the new General Plan occurs, that foundation of Greenlight -- to let the people vote -- is apparently no longer adequate for Greenlight. Greenlight II demands that -- notwithstanding this four year community-based development of the new general plan and then voter approval of it -- that our voters need to further vote on specific projects, even if that individual project is permitted under the then resident-approved new general plan. In other words, the voters would again vote to confirm what they already approved.

With almost five years of seeing first-hand how Greenlight works in practice, I do not endorse it now. It is too severe.

It requires a citywide vote on small projects, such as a 100-unit condo project by the airport or a three-story, 40,000-square-foot medical office building next to Hoag Hospital, if minimal changes to our general plan are required.

A concurrent effect of Greenlight is that many reasonable, new projects are never even filed with the city because of the widely held perception that if a Greenlight vote is required, then the voters will not approve any new project, however meritorious.

Many of you may view that effect as a good thing. But, having attended nearly 120 City Council meetings, I have more confidence that your elected officeholders know this city, do hear your concerns, actively debate the issues, and then make the informed and reasonable decisions.

If you don’t have that confidence, elect a new majority City Council who agree with you next November.

I challenge Greenlight and those who back the public finance initiative to work within the rules. Don’t invent new untested ones because you cannot elect to office those who support your respective cause.

* JOHN HEFFERNAN is the mayor of Newport Beach.

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