Hayden’s, Sierra Club’s Turnabout Infuriates Roberti

Senate leader David A. Roberti on Wednesday angrily accused Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and the Sierra Club of turning on him after his controversial firing last summer of a state coastal commissioner.

“They got me into the fight, deserted me when the fight got rough and then started taking some shots at me,” Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said of Hayden and the conservation organization.

“Legislators ought to be wary about ever having the Sierra Club as an ally,” said Roberti, who characterized himself--in an understatement--as a “touch piqued.”

At the core of his anger, Roberti said, was his agreement last July with Hayden and the Sierra Club to fire Coastal Commissioner Gilbert R. Contreras, a San Diego businessman he had appointed to the panel. The firing came within minutes of a crucial vote on Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s request to drill for oil along the Pacific Palisades shoreline.

The Sierra Club and Hayden opposed the drilling project and suspected that Contreras would cast a favorable swing vote. He was replaced in the midst of the meeting by a Roberti staff member, but the drilling permit was approved anyway.

For the abrupt removal of Contreras, Roberti, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, said he has received heavy criticism, especially in newspaper editorials. “I was willing to take all the heat (and) never mentioned the Sierra Club once,” Roberti said.

Now Hayden, backed by the Sierra Club, has introduced a major Coastal Commission bill that includes several controversial provisions aimed at curbing political influences on the commission. One provision would prohibit the firing of commissioners in the middle of their two-year terms.

Commissioners are appointed by the governor, the Speaker of the Assembly and the Senate Rules Committee, who can remove them at any time.

Hayden, commenting on Roberti’s firing of Contreras, said: “I was 100% supportive and still am. He gets blamed for doing what he did, whereas he did it with my support. . . . It was done as a last resort, and he was within his legal rights to do it.”

But Hayden said his backing of Roberti’s action “doesn’t mean I favor that as a permanent approach. First of all, it didn’t work anyway. And second, it’s subject to too much abuse.”

Fails in Committee

Hayden’s bill, which he conceded is not supported by Assembly leaders, failed to win approval of an Assembly committee Monday, although he has asked that the rejection be reconsidered today. The committee did approve, however, a bill by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Tarzana) that would curb private discussions between commissioners and persons who seek to influence them.

The Sierra Club supports both the Hayden and Friedman measures. On Wednesday, Sierra Club lobbyist Paula Carrell defended her calling for Contreras’ removal and her support of the Hayden legislation.

“I don’t think this is hypocritical,” Carrell said. “We followed the rules in existence at the time because we have as much right to as anybody else. But we think the rules should be changed.

“Having a fixed, two-year term is better. Removing people in the middle of a term more often would work against us than for us.”

The day after Contreras’ firing, Carrell wrote a letter to Roberti thanking him for firing the commissioner, calling the act “definitely a courageous step to take at this point in his term and surely justified.”

Apology to Roberti

Roberti said Carrell apologized to him after the Assembly committee hearing Monday for any embarrassment her support of the pending legislation might have caused him.

Despite the reassurances from Hayden and Carrell, Roberti remained angry Wednesday. “Contreras would never have been removed if the Sierra Club had not lobbied for it,” Roberti said.

Additionally, he said the letter in which he informed Contreras he had been fired was electronically transmitted from the state Capitol to Hayden’s office in Santa Monica, where it was hand-delivered at the commission meeting nearby.

“I make no apologies for what happened,” Roberti said. “I didn’t lay it on anyone else until today. I was willing to take all the criticism. . . . You don’t break friendships over one gross error, but I do think this is no way to deal with allies.”