Agran Hijacking El Toro, OC Register

Aug. 24-Hijacking El Toro,OC Register

Irvine Mayor Larry Agran is set to take control of the Great Park away from the public

When Orange County voters overwhelmingly approved Measure W to turn the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into the Great Park rather than an international airport, they had good reason to expect the development of a public park managed by public officials accountable to the public for the benefit of the public.

Yet in a stroke of brazenness almost breathtaking in its scale, Irvine Mayor Larry Agran and his allies on the Irvine City Council are pushing forward a plan that would seize control of the park and its hundreds of millions of dollars in public assets and hand it over to a private corporation, run by a cadre of unaccountable directors hand-picked by Agran and his political allies.

Under the proposed plan, a CEO would run the Orange County Great Park Corp. and report to seven independent directors. Here's the amazing thing: Five of the members would be unaccountable to any elected official. The Irvine City Council would appoint those five members, but after the initial appointment the board would fill its own vacancies and be off-limits to outside removal. Only a slim minority of two board members would be Irvine city employees or officials.

The corporation's bylaws - under consideration by the Irvine City Council on Tuesday - spell out several other eyebrow-raising points. First, meetings could be held at any time in any way without any public notice. Second, documents would not be open to the public. Third, up to 49 percent of directors could be "interested parties" who benefit financially from the park.

"I can't imagine that some attorney in Irvine said that they [the bylaws] pass the smell test," said Board of Supervisors Chairman Tom Wilson, understandably outraged by the proposal.

Irvine officials, including Mayor Agran, don't deny the park would be controlled by a private board with most members unaccountable to the public. But Agran dismissed the other problems, saying these are "standard" bylaws that are simply being put before the council by the city attorney. "My own preference is that the bylaws will reflect full compliance with the Public Records and Brown Act," Agran said.

Oh, come on. The city attorney, Joel Kuperberg, told me he prepared the bylaws at the request of the council. It's hard to believe that this document just happened passively, without Agran's knowledge and direction. If Agran's preferences were so clear, then why didn't he insist that they be included in the corporation bylaws?

Kuperberg defended his use of boilerplate language as a way to make the process easier, and dismissed concerns about open-meetings, open-records and conflict-of-interest provisions. They don't matter, he said, because they would be superseded by other bylaw provisions or state law.

"Then why put them in there?" asks Wilson. "They need a better model. ... Nothing should be easy. There should be as much open disclosure as possible to assure the plan is on the up and up."

Keep in mind, also, that if the bylaws are contradictory, or if provisions are superseded by state law, then members of the public could be forced to file lawsuits to gain the right to public records or to attend meetings or to oppose apparent conflicts of interest.

Kuperberg told me there is still plenty of time to change the bylaws. "I don't want to give you the opinion that people are staying up late developing this instrument," he added. But the council could vote as early as Tuesday on the bylaws as proposed. Someone darn well should be staying up late making certain the document is a sound one.

Frankly, this process is troubling. Orange County residents and officials are supposed to accept a document that takes the park outside of public control, that has no mandates for audits or restrictions on salaries and that, at the very least, includes questionable and contradictory language about open government and conflicts of interest. Don't worry, though, Irvine officials tell us we can trust that what the bylaws say isn't really what they mean.

County residents are being played for fools.

"Under this governance structure, the only criterion for service is that you are a friend or are loyal to Larry Agran," argues former state Sen. John Lewis. "What is the protection from favoritism?"

The answer: There is none.

The corporation would not only receive valuable public property, but it would have bonding authority. Assets valued at $300 million or more would potentially be under the control of a small band of politically well-connected ideologues. Positions would be divvied up and salaries determined by the board, with no oversight from anyone else.

This would be unobjectionable if we were talking about privately obtained land and money. But we are talking about public land, assets and taxpayer dollars.

"The establishment of the OCGPC will ensure regional representation and diversity through its Board of Directors, mindful of our commitment that the Orange County Great Park remains a regional asset for all residents of Orange County to enjoy," Mayor Agran said in a recent letter to Orange County supervisors.

What incredible doublespeak, given that the plan assures that the smallest possible group of people would have any serious say in the Great Park's development.

Supporters depict the plan as a form of privatization that will keep taxpayers off the hook. Here we have the most left-wing council majority in the county promoting a "free-market" plan to protect taxpayers. That should set off some alarms. As Supervisor Chris Norby puts it, "I'm in favor of privatization. But this seems like Soviet-style privatization. You seize public assets and give them to your cronies."

Defenders of the plan are sure to point to Central Park in New York City as a model. Central Park is run by the Central Park Conservancy, which is a private, nonprofit agency that manages it. But Central Park is a city-owned asset. The conservancy manages the park on an eight-year contract - it isn't handed a 99-year lease, as Irvine intends to give the Great Park. The Central Park Conservancy reports to New York's Department of Parks and Recreation, which is accountable to city officials elected by the public.

San Diego's Balboa Park is run by the city's parks and recreation department, as are most large urban parks throughout the United States. Public agencies don't do the best job of running things. But public assets of this nature need to be controlled by people who are accountable to the public.

"It's a matter of good governance," argues former Irvine Councilman Greg Smith, who opposed the airport and supports the Great Park idea and the creation of a nonprofit agency to run it. But he is adamantly opposed to turning public assets over to a small clique.

Yet expect corporation supporters to depict him and any other opponent of this plan as a tool of wealthy Newport Beach interests hellbent on restoring an airport at El Toro. Mark my words.

"A lot of people worked hard to see the airport defeated and now they won't have a hand in this," Smith said. The consortium of anti-airport south county cities, the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, was never asked to review the plan or for any input from the Irvine council, according to an ETRPA spokesperson.

Supervisor Bill Campbell also is concerned about the current plan. He wants the park corporation to be transparent in its finances, to assure a fair and open bidding process and to follow open meetings and records provisions. He also wants the board's membership to be configured differently, including a majority of members who are officials elected by the public (including the supervisor who represents the district and the county treasurer).

"Once board members are selected, it's self-perpetuating," Campbell said. "That drives me up the wall. They say that's how other not-for-profits operate. But this is not like other not-for-profits. The [Great Park corporation] is responsible for $300 million in public funds."

There's still a chance for the city to do the right thing. One possible proposal would increase the number of countywide elected officials on the board, which would at least be a start.

Even if the city approves the bylaws in their current dreadful state, the Great Park Corp. is still not a done deal until the land is sold by the Navy and transferred to the city by the developers who buy the land. The city must also vote on the lease.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors has time to pressure LAFCO - the Local Agency Formation Commission, which is responsible for approving the annexation of the land by Irvine - to delay annexation until responsible bylaws are adopted.

If LAFCO doesn't want to do the right thing, U.S. Rep. Chris Cox needs to pressure the Department of the Navy to intervene. The rationale is obvious: Such a gift of public funds to a small, privately controlled corporation casts a specter on the entire base-closure process.

Orange County residents and officials need to be loud and clear on this one: The Great Park needs to remain a public resource, not be used as a private financial playground controlled by anyone's political machine.