THE STATE ELECTION : L.A.’s Slow-Growth Measure Wins by Wide Margin : Lynch Out Front in Assessor Race; Bond Proposal for County Jail System Expansion Is Close

Approving a landmark initiative to limit commercial development by a wide margin, Los Angeles voters Tuesday sent City Hall a strong message of dissatisfaction with the sprawl of high-rise buildings and increasing traffic congestion.

In other local balloting, Deputy Assessor John J. Lynch was leading businessman Jim Keysor in the race for Los Angeles County assessor. A controversial “Jobs With Peace” initiative on the Los Angeles city ballot was being rejected. And a county bond measure, Proposition J, which would finance expansion of the overcrowded County Jail system, was close to the required two-thirds margin to win.

As predicted by both proponents and critics, including City Council President Pat Russell, the slow-growth initiative, Proposition U, was passing easily.

“People no longer want the destiny of the city to be determined by large developers and their paid lobbyists,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, who co-authored the measure with Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. Speaking at a Westside victory party attended by leaders of homeowner groups which worked for passage of the initiative, Yaroslavsky said the vote “sends a message to City Hall about the mood of the people” and will bring order to a planning process that “does not protect neighborhoods against the effects of traffic and high-density development.”

Richard Wirth, government affairs director for the Building Industry Assn., a developers’ group, said that builders were “disappointed” and would explore a possible legal challenge.

William Robertson, executive secretary of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and a leading critic of the initiative, said he was not surprised by returns. He predicted the measure would prove “grossly unfair . . . take away opportunities for lots of jobs” and cause “a great deal of unrest, particularly in the minority communities.”

In the assessor’s race, Lynch was leading Keysor by a considerable margin. Lynch, a Republican who expected to do well in absentee voting, said one endorsement may have made the difference.

“I wouldn’t be standing here today if it wasn’t for Howard Jarvis,” he said of the late tax crusader who backed him early on.

Outspent by his opponent, Lynch said he ran a shoe-leather campaign, meeting with 300 to 600 people a day, speaking to service clubs, homeowner groups and Republican clubs.

Keysor agreed that may have made the difference.

“John Lynch was an intensively hard campaigner,” he said. “He worked day and night.”

The “Jobs With Peace” initiative on the Los Angeles city ballot that encouraged reduced military spending, Proposition V, appeared to be headed for defeat, and Proposition W, a non-controversial city measure to make technical changes in how housing bonds are issued, was passing.

The slow-growth initiative grew out of the most sweeping effort yet to control development in a city that has seen 100 years of sprawl. By Election Day, it had joined a grass-roots growth-control uprising in California that has spread from San Francisco’s business district to the open hills of San Diego County.

Slow-growth forces in Los Angeles gained momentum recently because of a seemingly erratic scattering of bulky shopping malls, high-rise office buildings and large apartment and condominium complexes built under generous and outdated zoning laws enacted during the post-war building boom.

Proposition U was drawn up to cut in half the size of new buildings allowed on more than 70% of the 29,000 acres of commercial and industrial property in the city. The measure primarily took aim at office and retail development lining major Westside and Valley boulevards, where the city’s commercial real estate market is the hottest.

Spared from the measure’s effects were intense high-rise commercial development, such as downtown, much of Wilshire Boulevard, Century City, Hollywood and Universal City.

The measure was promoted by its backers as the vanguard of a revolt against a city political leadership that they charged has catered to developers in pursuit of a vision of Los Angeles as the financial capital of the Pacific Rim and hopes of becoming the nation’s largest city after the turn of the century.

Growth must be limited, supporters argued, because the quality of life in neighborhoods is being degraded, streets and freeways are clogged and the sewer system is overloaded.

The measure enjoyed widespread support from Valley, Westside, airport and harbor-area homeowner groups.

However, critics, including Russell, real estate interests, labor leaders and most minority members of the City Council, argued that it was a quick-fix, sledgehammer solution to the city’s growing pains. They said it would discourage investment in Los Angeles, cost jobs and dampen hopes for development in economically depressed areas of the city.

Little Enthusiasm

While the initiative rallied homeowner groups in the suburbs, it generated little enthusiasm in the heavily minority communities of South-Central and East Los Angeles, where the traffic congestion and overdevelopment have not been top concerns.

The only real campaigning was on the side of the proponents, who spent more than $300,000.

Despite having powerful, big-money backers, the opposition campaign sputtered from the beginning. An effort by labor and development leaders to raise campaign funds went nowhere, apparently because some big donors thought the measure tapped widespread frustrations and could not be defeated.

In the assessor’s race, Keysor and Lynch ran campaigns that raised doubts about their judgment and qualifications for the job. Both candidates made exaggerated claims about their preparedness to run the technical and complex 1,200-employee agency.

Political Comeback

Keysor, trying for a political comeback after losing his Assembly seat in 1978 and failing in a bid for City Council in 1981, promoted himself as a top “deputy assessor” who had helped keep the agency efficient. But that claim was based on a recent appointment as an unpaid adviser to his political ally, Assessor Alexander Pope, who is leaving office after losing a bid for a State Board of Equalization seat.

Lynch said his 14 years in the department made him the most qualified to manage the agency, which establishes the taxable value on 2.1 million parcels of land in the county. However, he had never advanced beyond a low-level appraiser’s position or been given any management responsibility.

Keysor, using mostly his own money, outspent Lynch about 3 to 1. Although the assessor’s race is nonpartisan, Democrat Keysor relied largely on association with labor unions and endorsements from Democratic elected officials, while Lynch, a conservative Republican endorsed by Jarvis, won backing from prominent GOP leaders.

Jobs With Peace

Proposition V, the “Jobs With Peace” initiative, proposed that Los Angeles be the first city in the nation to establish an office expressly to pressure Washington for a reduction in military spending. It called for creation of an advisory council and a three-member staff at City Hall to lobby for a shift in federal appropriations into increased social and community programs. The ballot measure also called on the advisory panel to try to persuade administrators of private and public pension funds to sell their military-related investments.

Some of the nation’s largest aerospace firms and defense contractors contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat the measure, claiming that passage of the measure would cost local aerospace workers their jobs and lead to economic devastation.