Stain on the Mountains

It is one thing for Chicago politicians to mess up their own turf, but quite another for them to tamper with urgent efforts to preserve the best of what precious little natural open space remains in the Los Angeles area. Because one man had the right connections to the right Chicago wards, a major blow has been dealt to the National Park Service’s ability to piece together the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

This session of Congress should move quickly to undo the sneak attack on the Santa Monica park program conducted by Illinois pols under cover of the catch-all budget resolution in December.

The story in brief, as outlined by Times writer Judy Pasternak: Actor-musician George Murphy Dunne Jr. was frustrated by Park Service attempts to condemn his 10-acre lot on a ridge overlooking Trancas and Zuma canyons in the heart of the recreation area. Dunne, son of the president of the Cook County, Ill., Board of Commissioners, contacted family friends within the Illinois delegation in Congress to win the special legislation permitting him to build a house on one of the choice scenic spots in the federal preserve. Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.) inserted language in the budget resolution letting a landowner build a new home where a house had stood at any time before the creation of the National Recreation Area in 1978.

There was a house on Dunne’s plot, but it burned down in the 1950s and there was no structure on the land when Dunne bought it in the 1970s. Until the change engineered by Yates, the House member who oversees the Interior Department budget, the exemption was allowed only for homes actually standing in 1978. Yates explained that “if it was destroyed, they have a right along with the land to have it rebuilt.” Nonsense. There was no such right until Yates got the law changed to read the way his political buddies wanted it to read.

Besides, Yates said, Dunne had gotten permits from the California Coastal Commission and local zoning officials to build. But the proper approach was stated by Nancy Ehorn, assistant superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains park: “That’s not the way to put a park together. That means you can make assumptions that the existing zoning dictates where the parks will be.” Would a property owner be able to build in the pathway of a new freeway just because the zoning laws seemed to allow it? Of course not--not even in Chicago.

Congress should remove this Chicago stain from the Santa Monicas.