Development Factions Map Battle Plans

Escrow Officers: Your Salary and Your Job Are At Risk! Understand the Issues and Educate Others.

All escrow officers, sales representatives, managers and support staff who depend on the new construction industry for a significant portion of their revenue will feel the devastating effects if any of the no-growth initiatives on the November ballot are passed.

--Building industry fund-raising flyer

Like the first stirrings of a sleeping giant, flyers like the one above are circulating throughout the construction industry and its allied businesses, as a powerful coalition of the county’s top development interests begins to mass its forces for the Nov. 8 vote on four slow-growth initiatives.

San Diegans for Regional Traffic Solutions, formed last month by leading developers, has begun to raise the estimated $1 million to $2 million it believes it needs to ensure the defeat of the two ballot initiatives sponsored by Citizens for Limited Growth--Proposition D in the county of San Diego and Proposition J in the city of San Diego.

A successful fund-raising effort of that size would give the organization about as much as the $1.8 million spent earlier this year in the victorious campaign waged by builders against Orange County’s slow-growth measure.

Competing Measures

And the builders’ campaign would be separate from one already being conducted by the Coalition for a Balanced Environment, a group of leading business and civic organizations that has pledged to raise as much as $400,000 to defeat Propositions D and J and win passage of Propositions B and H, the competing slow-growth measures sponsored by the county Board of Supervisors and the San Diego City Council, respectively.

While San Diegans for Regional Traffic Solutions’ fund-raising literature urges “no” votes on all four ballot propositions in its effort to raise cash and motivate volunteers, its publicly distributed literature does not yet target Propositions B and H.

Mike Madigan, senior vice president for Pardee Construction Co. and the political group’s spokesman, said the group is likely to come out against the government-backed measures in coming weeks.

Its first task, however, is to crush support for Propositions D and J, which it views as the top threat to the building industry and the county’s general economic health, Madigan said.

“Those things, there’s no question they are designed to bring great economic havoc to this town and particularly to our industry,” Madigan said. “That’s where we’ll spend the majority of our time.”

To that end, carpenters, construction workers, plumbers, insulation subcontractors, escrow officers and other construction industry groups are receiving similarly worded flyers with claims that the four “no-growth” initiatives will mean “elimination of at least one-half” of the workers in that field. Some of the flyers also claim “a reduction in your business revenues by as much as 75%.”

‘Radical No-Growthers’

The flyers also refer to Citizens for Limited Growth as “a group of radical no-growthers.”

Peter Navarro, economic adviser to Citizens for Limited Growth, said the strategy confirms his organization’s claim that the city-sponsored growth-management plan has been “watered down” to the point that builders can accept it. Navarro said he expects no real opposition to the government-sponsored plans by builders.

Tom Mullaney, co-chairman of Citizens for Limited Growth, said his group expected “fantastic claims about income loss and job loss” that would be leveled with “no substantiation for the claims.”

“Judging from how the building industry has misled voters in other parts of California, we expected and expect more outlandish behavior from them. They believe that Californians don’t deserve the truth, and anything goes,” Mullaney said.

A report issued last month by San Diego’s Economic Development Corp. predicted that unemployment will nearly double by the year 2000 and that industrial and commercial development will be reduced by 59% over the 22-year life of Proposition J if the so-called “Quality of Life Initiative” is passed by city voters.

Members of Citizens for Limited Growth have been highly critical of the study, which they called a “political” document because the EDC receives more than $400,000 in funding from the city, which is sponsoring a competing measure.

Conflicting Study

An earlier study conducted for the city by consultants from University of California, Berkeley, concluded that a 4,500-home construction cap would reduce total jobs in 1995 by just 1%, and would reduce construction industry jobs by just 3%.

San Diegans for Regional Traffic Solutions is also distributing a fund-raising videotape and, along with the county’s powerful Building Industry Assn., is urging allied industries to wage “education campaigns” among their members.

The organization representing the county’s 11 boards of Realtors, for example, will have volunteers walking precincts, manning phone banks, distributing flyers and sending out mailers, in addition to donating money from its own political action committees and individual members to San Diegans for Regional Traffic Solutions.

“We oppose all four (initiatives), but there is no question that the Quality of Life Initiative (Proposition J) and the Rural Preservation and Traffic Control Initiative (Proposition D) are far worse,” said Bud Porter, legislative advocate for the Realtors.

Similarly, leaders of the San Diego Apartment Assn. will be lobbying the county’s 4,000 apartment owners and will attempt to sway resident managers and even renters, said Bernie Rhinerson, the organization’s legislative analyst.

“I think the message to apartment owners is that this is an artificial restriction on property rights that could really damage the health of the rental market and maybe lead to other kinds of controls in the long term,” Rhinerson said.

An Easier Task

Madigan refused to release specific statistics, but a campaign source said the group’s polls show that defeat of the citizens initiatives is an easier task than defeat of the government-sponsored measures, which voters view as more reasonable.

Madigan said he was heartened by the number of undecided voters, which he said was the largest bloc in the coalition’s poll taken during the past several weeks. Madigan believes builders can sway undecided voters before the Nov. 8 election if they can convince them that the citizens initiatives will harm the economy without providing solutions to the traffic jams and crowding that sparked the current slow-growth fervor.

“We’ve got to say, ‘Think about what it is your real concerns are. If your concern is traffic, then we’ve got to find ways to solve the traffic problem. If your concern is what’s going on at the Point Loma Sewage Treatment Plant, then that’s what we’ve got to deal with,’ ” Madigan said.

Organized last month after the city and county completed their slow-growth plans, San Diegans for Regional Traffic Solutions is headed by leaders of some of the county’s most powerful development companies. Besides Pardee, representatives of Fieldstone, Baldwin and Carmel Mountain Ranch development companies are running the organization, Madigan said.

The group has hired longtime building-industry political consultant Jean Andrews and San Francisco consultants Woodward & McDowell, who Andrews said specialize on campaigns for ballot measures.

With a little less than $200,000 raised so far, the group thus far has concentrated on distributing flyers and circulating the fund-raising video, Andrews said. It has not sent direct mail or purchased any media time, but may, she said.

Andrews and Madigan refused to comment on phone-bank efforts, but one of the organization’s letters to industry volunteers mentions phone solicitation already being conducted.

Citizens for Limited Growth, in contrast, estimates it will have $25,000 to $100,000 to spend on the campaign, allowing it to distribute leaflets and do a limited amount of radio advertising and mailings. Volunteers will walk precincts. The group may be able to conduct one poll, Mullaney said.

“There’s no way we can afford the builders’ game, where they can do a poll every three or four weeks,” he said.

“I’d rather be Goliath than David, or at least have an even match,” he said.