|
 |
|
|
Demopublican Developmentality
April 1988
DEVELOPMENT AND THE DEMOPUBLICANS By Rex Frankel Howard Hughes came to Southern California in 1940, and bought about 1000 acres of farmland and blufftops south of Venice for his new aircraft plant, paying less than $500,000 for all of it. By the time of his death in 1976, Hughes Aircraft had become the largest employer in the State, with defense plants throughout Southern California. Producing missile guidance systems, helicopters, radar and satellites, Hughes lead the U.S. to great advances in technology, all mostly paid for with Federal tax dollars. While their products led to economic prosperity here, they produced an equal amount of suffering among innocent victims of foreign wars whose combatants Hughes supplied. Hughes left an estate worth billions. After battles among distant heirs were settled, Hughes' holding company, Summa Corp. began a big sell-off. Hughes Helicopters fetched over $1 billion from McDonell Douglas; the Hughes Tool Co. was sold to Baker tool co. (both make oil drilling equipment); The Hughes Medical Institute, a non-profit organization, sold Hughes Aircraft to General motors for more than $5 billion. Summa also sold three of its Las Vegas hotel/casinos, the Desert Inn, the Sands and the Silver Slipper. Now that Summa/Hughes had sold all its assets, what did it have left? 1000 acres of prime real estate in West L.A. During the next few years, Summa drafted plans to develop the land to the maximum extent, receiving unanimous approvals from City, County and State governments, and also unanimous opposition from residents on all sides. OILING THE MACHINE Most L.A. City and County officials have been in office since the the 1970's or even 1960's. The biggest project, Playa Vista, needed OK's from all three levels of government, and so, coincidentally, of course, Summa contributed mightily to election campaigns of top state officials, all five County Supervisors, and 13 of 15 L.A. City Council members. In 1983, Summa interests funded a major portion of Councilwoman Pat Russell's 1983 reelection campaign, whose L.A. district surrounded their property. Russell's Chief Deputy and campaign manager, Curtis Rossiter, who had been her top assistant since 1969, quit working as a City-paid employee in '82 to work for Summa, serving as a paid lobbyist. Rossiter's company, Urban Planning Consultants, soon lined up the developers of two other big projects, Marina Place and Continental City, all the while Rossiter continued to run Russell's reelection campaigns. Summa's Playa Vista was at the time unincorporated County territory. Renters in the Marina Del Rey area were threatening to form their own city to get out from under control of the Supervisors, who were allowing massive rent increases. Summa feared that the MDR folks would try to annex Playa Vista into their new city. Meanwhile, the L.A. County Grand Jury condemned the Playa Vista project because of its traffic impacts, saying many L.A. City streets would have to be widened to accomodate it. Fearful of allowing Marina renters a voice in the future of their "investment", Summa's buddies on the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO)approved the lands annexation into L.A. City in 1985. Two Supervisors sit on the LAFCO, Edelman and Schabarum. Summa contributions to all five Supervisors totalled more than $60,000 since 1984. Summa could well expect favorable treatment from L.A. City officials, as their contributions to City Council members since 1984 have totalled more than $32,000, and payments to Mayor Bradley's campaigns totalled $24,000. (Currently 11 of the 15 Councilmembers have accepted Summa money--leaving Ruth Galanter, Marvin Braude, Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina unbought.) Upon Playa Vista's annexation,Russell pushed thru rezonings of the property from agricultural and industry to Hi-rise hotels, offices and condos. Summa had sailed thru City and County approvals and next faced the State Coastal Commission, which unanimously backed Summa. Mayor Bradley personally appeared before the Coastal Commission to state his and the Council's unanimous support. The Coastal Commission's 12 members are chosen, 4 each, by conservative Republican Governor George Deukmejian and liberal Democrats Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and State Senate President David Roberti, the three most powerful politicians in California, and also the most contributed-to. (Just how much money did these guys raise last year? Duke raised $2.1 million, Brown $1.8 million and Roberti $1.6 million.) More than $500,000 of Summa cash went to state officials between 1981 and 1986. In 83-84, Duke got $10,000, Brown $25,000 and Roberti $14,000. Summa gave $235, 570 to state officials those 2 years.If you're wondering why none of our locally elected state reps took action to protect the westside, maybe it's because Summa cash went to 32 of our 40 State Senators and 18 of 80 Assemblymembers, among them the locally elected Diane Watson, Herschel Rosenthal, Gwen Moore, Alan Robbins, Mike Roos, Gary K. Hart, Maxine Waters, Art Torres, Richard Katz, Gray Davis and Bob Beverly. (By the way, a special state law was passed late in 1986 to thwart MDR cityhood). Meanwhile, a proposal before the state parks dept. to buy all of Playa Vista west of Lincoln blvd and south of Ballona Creek for a nature conservancy was mysteriously torpedoed. A lawsuit filed by the Friends of the Ballona Wetlands may save this area yet. The Howard Hughes Center (HHC), located at the intersection of Centinela Ave. and Sepulveda Blvd., is a disaster waiting to happen. If you look at a topographic map--one with geologic features--you can see that the Center is between two active parallel earthquake faults, the Charnock and Overland Avenue faults. Faults have two parts, which are either sliding horizontally or vertically against each other. The HHC faults are both rising, however, with the side nearest the HHC in each sinking, forming a trough. The geologic term for this area is a Graben, a German word which also means a Grave. There is some dispute as to whether the Charnock and Overland faults are "active". The 1972 Alquist-Priolo act required the State Geologist to identify and prevent development around faults. However, officials announced in 1978 that with the current level of development on the faults already, it would be too expensive to test to find out if there are cracks in the surface. And since the State says this, the City of L.A. doesn't have to test the faults, nor did Summa have to do any tests. When will they ever learn? Both the 1971 Sylmar quake and last year's Whittier quake occurred on "inactive" faults. Summa shaking, indeed. SHILL GAMES At public hearings for the HHC, only three residents of Westchester spoke in favor of it; only two lived in the adjacent neighborhood, Westport Heights. Meanwhile, the opponents, led by the Coalition of Concerned Communities, held forums on the project attended by hundreds of neighbors who also opposed HHC. Of the three supporters, the local two were involved in the building industry, and the other was an attorney who served as President of the Westchester Vitalization Corp., which was created by Pat Russell, (its major concern was keeping retail business out of HHC, which would compete with stores in downtown Westchester owned by other members of the WVC.) Doug Haley, a contractor, owned a vacant lot (which he's now building a house on), which would have served as a road leading into the originally planned residential development at the center. Haley bought his lot, interestingly, from the firm which performed all of Summa's title searches, the Stewart Title Co. Guy Bartoli is an architect active with projects in Venice and Marina Del Rey. Bartoli testified that the Westchester CCC didn't represent the views of the neighborhood--he did. Even though opposition was almost unanimous, Russell touted the project as having "the overwhelming support of a majority of residents". Russell then pushed thru a sneaky zone change and special variance for Summa to allow hi-rises as dense as those in Century City, all the while accusing her neighborhood opponents of spreading misinformation and using "scare tactics". In the next election, the Westport Heights neighborhood bombed Russell by almost a three to one margin to elect Ruth Galanter. The Playa Vista project also generated massive public opposition, and two lawsuits were filed, by the Friends of the Ballona Wetlands and the Venice Town Council. In early '85, Summa brought in the National Audubon Society to manage a small bird sanctuary in the west end of the site, paying it $10 million to clean up and run it, also proposing to rename it the Audubon Marsh. Now, Pat Russell was able to trumpet to the press how environmentalists now supported Playa Vista, and so, both Council and State Coastal Commission OK's came unanimously later that year. SLOW GROWTH In June 1987, environmentalist Ruth Galanter kicked Pat Russell out of City Hall. Russell, who took contributions from almost every developer in town, tried to curry favor in the poorest parts of her district by giving a dozen donuts to each of 10,000 voters. How angry are California residents with the uncontrolled growth being pushed by leaders of both major parties? Obviously, very. Slow growth initiatives are proposed or on the ballot in Orange County, Culver City, Manhattan Beach and Santa Monica. Residents around Magic Mountain recently formed the city of Santa Clarita,escaping the control of our bought-off County Supervisors. Cityhood movements are now going full bore in Malibu, Calabasas, Diamond Bar and Hacienda Heights. Pretty soon, there won't be any land left in L.A. for our Supervisors to pave over. DISENFRANCHISEMENT Obviously,The Slow Growth movement, scares the hell out of our political establishment. Developers think they've bought the system and the people are taking it back. Orange County officials are busy working out exemptions for most major developers from their Slow Growth initiative. L.A. City officials, notably Planning Commision Chair Dan Garcia, have taken to brand West L.A. environmentalists as elitists and racists. Meanwhile, residents in other parts of L.A. have opposed massive and inappropriate commercial or industrial uses intruding into their neighborhoods. None of these opponents are called racists, however. This double standard is readily accepted by officials of both our political parties, just as readily, it seems, as they accept campaign contributions from backers of massive projects they support. Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who also serves as National Campaign Chairman for Jesse Jackson's presidential bid, has proposed several bills to "reform" our "Democratic" process. Brown claims the process is too influenced by special interests. (No snickering!) ---Citizen's initiatives would be submitted with the required number of signatures to the legislature, which would Discuss them for four years, before the public would be allowed to vote on them. ---Another Brown idea is to abolish County and City governments. (HAHA) No, seriously. Brown would replace local governments with "A few regional agencies". This would probably mean our local govt. would be even farther away, meaning our officials would be even less accountable for their actions. ---A bill that would shield state officials from public scrutiny of info gathered in probes into their actions had the endorsement of Roberti, Brown and the top 2 Republican legislators, Ken Maddy and Pat Nolan. Luckily, other State House members dumped the bill last year. ---A bill proposed by a Newport Beach State Senator, SB 442, would give developers eminent domain rights on private property. If they buy up 3/4ths of land in an area, they can then apply to take over the remaining property. ---Contract Development Agreements were Pat Russell's last resort with the Howard Hughes Center and another jumbo project near L.A. Airport, Continental City. The contracts allowed Russell to exempt both from the Slow Growth initiative Proposition U, which was passed by L.A. voters by a 70% margin in November 1986. The contracts, OKed by the City Council one month before Prop. U's passage, locked in overall project densities over five times that of the dense Playa Vista and surrounding neighborhoods, and protect the projects from changes by new Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. Contract Development Agreements were authorized by a State law which was signed in 1978 by supposedly-liberal Gov. Jerry Brown Jr., the same year the State decided neither the Charnock or Overland faults were active. Another environmental disaster, Oxy Petroleum's bid to drill for oil beneath a Pacific Palisades landslide, was recently oked by the California Supreme Court. (One of Oxy's attorneys, Richard M. Mosk, is the son of Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk. The elder Mosk abstained from the decision). In 1972, a more "liberal" Supreme Court rejected Oxy. Meanwhile, in 1986, "conservative" voters threw out 3 "liberal" Court justices. Unlike the uproar over the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, there was no opposition or controversy over Deukmejian's conservative appointments to the Court. Neither Brown nor Roberti raised a fuss. Once, the public had to worry about "liberal" Rose Bird's Supreme Court letting murderers off lightly; now we may face Deukmejian, Roberti and Brown's Court letting developers get away with murder. Something is rotten in Sacramento. ---Next Month: Oxy puts the squeeze on the Palisades, Admiralty Place developers want to go denser than the Howard Hughes Center..................
|
