Pentagon to OK Grant to Study El Toro’s Future

WASHINGTON â€”  The check is almost in the mail.

After months of bureaucratic wrangling, the Defense Department is preparing to release to Orange County a $910,317 federal grant for planning the conversion of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station from military to civilian use.

Base closure officials said Monday that the department’s Office of Economic Adjustment signed the release and sent it to its legislative affairs office for an official announcement.

Among those anticipating final approval of the grant was Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who worked to preserve the funding after the Defense Department threatened to block it, blaming the county’s failure to follow federal guidelines in choosing a consultant for the work.

With those procedural differences now worked out, the Pentagon’s Office of Economic Adjustment has agreed to release the funds to study future uses of the base, which is scheduled to close by 1999.

The impending award comes as a setback for a South County citizens coalition, which asked the Pentagon to delay the funds’ release until local voters decide the fate of a March 26 initiative aimed at blocking development of a commercial airport at El Toro.

The South County plea was supported in letters sent to Assistant Secretary of Defense Joshua Gotbaum by Reps. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) and Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

“It’s a big-time mistake,� Irvine Mayor Michael Ward said of the department’s funding decision. “They are really helping El Toro become a vacant lot for a lot of years. If they would wait until this was decided by voters, they could probably avoid a lot of litigation for years to come.�

Ward also said the decision was badly timed: A San Diego County court is expected to rule this week on the coalition’s lawsuit to repeal Measure A, an initiative voters approved in November 1994 that called for development of a commercial airport at El Toro.

“I think what the federal government is doing here is fueling the fire� by proceeding with the grant, Ward said.

But the Pentagon’s decision shores up the county’s effort to study a commercial airport development, which has largely relied on a $908,164 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration. State and local funds are also being used to plan the Marine base’s future.

County officials reserved comment until the funding is officially announced, but a spokeswoman for John Wayne Airport said county aviation officials were “optimistic.�

A Pentagon decision to release the funds was not unexpected.

This month, the Office of Economic Adjustment sent letters to Ward and Lake Forest Mayor Richard T. Dixon, rejecting their pleas to postpone the funding. The letters said the funds would be sent to Orange County pending an “acceptable administrative clarification� of the work to be funded by the grant.

Bill Kogerman, who heads Taxpayers for Responsible Planning, which is behind the March 26 anti-airport initiative, said that giving the funds to the El Toro planning agency was tantamount to putting a “fox in the henhouse,� because that agency is managed by Orange County government, which is committed to developing a commercial airport there.

Kogerman said that if the Pentagon were serious about using the money to study the best uses of the base, it should “give that money to a credible, fair, impartial study consultant who will really be impartial.�