WILL A lawsuit by incorporation activists against the Monterey County Local Agency Formation Commission help or hinder the drive to make Carmel Valley California’s newest town?

That question was at the heart of a debate this week after the Monterey County Herald featured dueling commentaries by LAFCO chairman Vince DiMaggio and Carmel Valley incorporation proponent Glenn Robinson.

The Carmel Valley Forum, a local non-profit group dedicated to putting the incorporation issue on the ballot, sued LAFCO in March after the agency’s commissioners voted in October 2006 to require proponents to pay for an environmental impact report estimated to cost $365,000 and expected to add two or three years to the process.

The March 6 lawsuit petitioned Monterey County Superior Court to require that LAFCO stick to its December 2005 decision not to require an EIR. The suit also asks that LAFCO be prevented from requiring further financial, revenue neutrality or boundary data to be provided in connection with the incorporation proposal.

In his commentary in the Herald, and in an interview with The Pine Cone this week, DiMaggio insisted the lawsuit has no chance to succeed.

“The lawsuit isn’t going to get us anywhere,” said DiMaggio, who was one of just two commissioners who voted against the EIR requirement last October. “It’s incredibly destructive to the process. The court is not going to reverse LAFCO’s decision. No court is going to say, ‘Go back to a lower level of environmental review.’”

Robinson, though, is confident the lawsuit will prevail.

“I feel confident the Carmel Valley Forum will win,” he responded. “First, LAFCO is in clear violation of all kinds of timing rules built into the law. For example, LAFCO had a maximum of 160 days to change its mind on the negative declaration, and they missed that deadline by three months. Second, LAFCO is required to make findings justifying the EIR. To this day, it has not made a single finding justifying the EIR.”

DiMaggio also warned that financial and revenue data supporting the incorporation proposal are “becoming stale” because of the delay caused by the lawsuit. Robinson countered that LAFCO has already decided the data are obsolete.

“LAFCO ordered an EIR and new and revised studies for everything we’ve done,” he said. “Quite literally, LAFCO ordered us to start the whole process over, not just do an EIR.”

DiMaggio is also concerned taxpayers ultimately will bear the burden of the cost of the lawsuit.

“It’s the cities and the county that fund LAFCO,” he explained. “All the [Carmel Valley Forum] is doing is wasting taxpayers’ money. Our budget for litigation is higher than it’s been in five years.”

Robinson suggested it is LAFCO that is wasting taxpayers’ money.

“As a public agency, LAFCO has the responsibility to safeguard the public’s interests, including our tax dollars,” he responded. “By not playing by the rules — by the law — LAFCO ... is playing fast and loose with our tax dollars.”

The debate with Robinson places DiMaggio in a curious position. He was once listed on an advisory board for LandWatch, a group that supports putting the incorporation issue on the ballot. And as a LAFCO commissioner, he has often eloquently defended the position of incorporation proponents. But as chairman of the board, he now is in a place to bear the brunt of proponents’ frustration over the delayed incorporation process.

“Ultimately, my position as chairman is, ‘How can I bring these two sides together?’” he said. “I take this very seriously.”

While DiMaggio voted against the EIR requirement, he believes it is in the best interest of proponents to get it over with.

“A well done EIR that analyzes all the impacts [of incorporation] will go a long way toward alleviating the concerns of commissioners,” he said. “Let’s get things moving again.”

Counter suit

LAFCO filed its own lawsuit April 5 alleging the Carmel Valley Forum owes more than $140,000 in costs associated with creating a town. The CVF has already paid about $120,000.

Meanwhile, the group’s tax returns indicate it received contributions totaling $152,781 from 2004 to 2006.

Robinson didn’t address the CVF’s ability to fund the EIR. Instead, he took aim at an incorporation process that — whether successful or not — could cost his group as much as $625,000.

“$625,000 is about eight times what the State of California says an incorporation process should cost,” he said. “What makes you think that LAFCO would let us vote on incorporation even if we spent the entire $625,000?”