OC Biz Council chief Lucy Dunn is happy they’ve finally restored the Bolsa Chica wetlands in Huntington Beach, but laments the process: “When I started working on Bolsa Chica in 1987, the landowners were pursuing approvals to build 5,700 homes in a variety of price ranges, one million square feet of commercial development and visitor-serving hotels, a marina with 1,000 boat slips and 900 acres of wetlands to be restored at no taxpayer expense. After 30 years and $100 million, the landowners ended up with 372 homes for rich people and about 1,000 acres of wetlands being restored courtesy of the taxpayers. And we wonder why there’s a housing shortage!” Dunn is pleased, however, that government agencies “substantially adopted” the restoration plan of her former employer, Hearthside Homes: “In some parts of the wetlands, it would take 28 days for a drop of water to circulate from the ocean to the wetlands and back to the ocean, not great water quality. Today, with that new tidal inlet, the wetlands are flushed twice a day with ocean water, which is much healthier for the habitat.” In her first year with the biz council, Dunn helped to spearhead renewal of the Measure M transportation tax. Her top issue for Year 2,no surprise,is housing …
There’s high turnover in executive suites these days. But 46-year-old Jim Morris, who succeeds Tom Sutton as president and CEO of Pacific Life next April, takes over a notably stable ship. Sutton has served 17 years in the top job, and the average tenure of a Pac Life chief in the past century is 14 years. Railroad tycoon Leland Stanford, the company’s first CEO and policyholder in 1868, went on to found Stanford University …
There’s another prominent Jim Morris in OC: This one heads the labor and employment group at Rutan & Tucker. Besides sharing a name, both JM’s are good golfers …
Cassie DeYoung and Pat Bates spent more than $5 million,most of it their own money,in their year-long, two-round battle for Tom Wilson’s South County supervisor seat. According to updated election filings, winner Bates spent $1.3 million, almost half of it self-financed. But DeYoung spent $4 million of her own money in the losing effort. Direct mail ain’t cheap: DeYoung ran almost $2 million through campaign consultant Forde and Mollrich; Kenny the Printer got $400,000, the U.S. Postal Service $800,000…
Enron prosecutor John Hueston, who recently joined Irell and Manella in Newport Beach, is one of Fortune’s 25 Portraits of Power for 2006. He appears on “Inside OC” this week …
Chapman U Prof Essie Adibi called out his boss, Prez Jim Doti in front of a 1,000 businesspeople at their annual economic forecast: “You’re spending too much,” Adibi told Doti, an economics adviser to big-spending Gov. Schwarzenegger. “I can do this,” added a smiling Adibi, “because I have tenure.”
