Local News in Brief : Parkland Funding Gains

Dire predictions of park closures and staff cutbacks gave way to ambitious plans for the purchase of parkland and open space Wednesday after legislative budget writers restored money they had slashed from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy budget last week.

“We got everything that we really wanted,” said Joseph Edmiston, executive director of the conservancy, a state agency that buys land in the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Fernando Valley foothills. “We made a major breakthrough in terms of having the members of the committee understand the kind of public support” for the conservancy.

Edmiston’s upbeat assessment of how the agency fared in a two-house budget conference committee was in sharp contrast to expressions of gloom and doom heard last week after budget writers eliminated $253,000 in state funding from the conservancy’s operating budget.

After an intensive lobbying campaign by the conservancy and its legislative allies, lawmakers who had been skeptical of the need to support the agency when the state is in tough fiscal times did an about-face late Tuesday and agreed to provide $100,000 for operating expenses.

The remainder will come from a temporary loan of money from Proposition 70, the massive $776-million park bond measure passed by California voters June 7.