Setting two facts straight

* EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one in an occasional Forum feature in which the Daily Pilot gives critics of the paper an opportunity to sound off about the paper.

As spokesman for Newporters for Responsible Growth, I need to point out two inaccuracies that have cropped up recently in the Daily Pilot's reporting and commentary concerning the group and the pending municipal debt initiative in the city of Newport Beach that it supports:

1. The Pilot has incorrectly characterized the group as opposing the new city hall project. This is not true.

Newporters for Responsible Growth neither supports nor opposes the project per se. What it does advocate is a change in the law to require voter approval before the City Council may incur debt in the form of certificates of participation to construct public improvements -- including any new city hall.

Many of us understand the initiative as a necessary means to enforce the intent of current provisions of the City Charter, which require voter approval of any bonded indebtedness.

2. In a misleading over-simplification, the Pilot has taken to describing the debt initiative as requiring voter approval of any debt greater than $3 million.

This is not true for the following reasons: The initiative applies only to debt incurred by the city to finance public improvements, except when the borrowing is to finance a public improvement in the form of bonded indebtedness or which a court has found to be mandatory; or financed over a period of less than two years; or of less than $3 million.

It is not true for the Pilot to report that the initiative requires voter approval of any debt more than $3 million.

Your entire readership appreciates your continuing efforts to report the news, giving careful attention to the facts.

* JOHN BUTTOLPH is the spokesman for Newporters for Responsible Government and a Newport Beach resident.