City Council Rejects Plan to Take Over CRA

A divided Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday rejected a proposal to take over the multibillion-dollar Community Redevelopment Agency, an action that could set the stage for a public referendum on social spending in the city.

“I think we are out of touch with the public, and I think it’s very likely the public will have the opportunity to voice its feelings on the issue either next June or next November,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, the author of the proposal, which garnered six yes votes and nine no’s.

The City Council did vote Tuesday to strengthen its control over the tax-supported redevelopment agency, which has been at the center of a gathering storm over how much of its resources the city should devote to providing shelter, job training, child care and other services to the city’s poor.

With a yearly budget exceeding $500 million and authority to spend as much as $6 billion over the next decade, the CRA’s spending program is seen by many as a gauge of the city’s commitment to poor people. For the last year, the agency has come under heavy fire by activists and by some elected officials for devoting too much of its resources to subsidizing commercial development and expensive housing projects.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who has been blamed along with the council for not redirecting the CRA’s resources, had hoped to temper the controversy with a plan to devote at least $2 billion of the CRA’s funds to low-income housing and child care. By law, Bradley and the council share responsibility for the CRA. However, the mayor has been more aggressive than the council in charting agency policy.

On Tuesday, the council voted to give itself authority to review CRA budgets and work programs before they are approved by the agency’s commission, appointed by Bradley. In addition, the council gave itself veto power over agency decisions. The council also created a new committee to review CRA policy.

For 12 years the council has grappled with the question of CRA oversight. Critics have accused the council of hesitating to police the agency more aggressively because so many members have reaped political benefits from development that the CRA has underwritten in their districts.

Some council members argued that all the council did Tuesday was put in writing authority it has always had but declined to exercise. But others said that the council’s action both clarified and enhanced its authority.

“It gives us the ability to have complete oversight of the CRA without actually taking it over,” said Councilman Hal Bernson, who helped fashion the council’s new relationship with the CRA.

“It puts us in the driver’s seat,” said Councilwoman Gloria Molina, who has been a critic of the CRA but who disagreed sharply with Yaroslavsky’s proposal to take over the agency.

In one of few acrimonious moments during the council’s debate Tuesday, Molina accused Yaroslavsky of supporting the kind of CRA projects, subsidized with property taxes, that have made the agency a target of social activists. Molina said one such project that Yaroslavsky voted for is “The Metropolitan,” a $45-million luxury apartment complex that opened Tuesday in South Park on the edge of downtown.

Yaroslavsky said he could not recall how he voted on the project. But he said that questionable CRA projects often arrive before the council wrapped in a package of proposals, some good and some bad, which typically require an immediate vote.

“You can throw the baby out with the bathwater, and cast a ‘no’ vote on everything the CRA sends over. You can walk away from tough choices and simply not vote like Gloria does. Or, you can vote on everything that comes before you, as I do,” he said.

“But the real problem,” Yaroslavsky said, “is that the CRA has been so manipulative about the way they present information that you really must conclude that they have contempt for the council.”

Yaroslavsky argued that unless the council takes over the CRA it will not be able to control the agency.

Yaroslavsky’s Assessment

“The issue is whether we are going to be accountable or whether we wish to continue the cozy relationship between the CRA and certain pockets of power in city government.”

Yaroslavsky has been discussing the possibility of an initiative dealing with CRA policy to some of the community groups that have been most critical of the CRA. After the vote Tuesday, spokesmen for those groups expressed enthusiasm for an initiative.

For Yaroslavsky, organizing such an initiative would offer a way back into citywide politics, which he temporarily abandoned when he suddenly dropped out of the mayoral race late last year.

“We’re definitely going to explore the possibility of an initiative,” said Anthony Thigpenn, executive director of Los Angeles Jobs with Peace. “We don’t think the council has done enough. By their actions today, they are saying they are content to review policy, not to make it. We think redevelopment policy should be in the hands of the people’s elected representatives.”

But others said they were not yet sure whether Yaroslavsky would be able to lead an effective campaign after his withdrawal from the mayoral race.

Apprehension Seen

“I think there is a bit of apprehension that without wider council support, Zev might be isolated,” said a spokesman for one community organization who asked not to be named.

Voting with Yaroslavsky to take over the CRA were John Ferraro, Ruth Galanter, Ernani Bernardi, Nate Holden and Marvin Braude. None of the five said anything about the initiative during the floor debate over the CRA, although Braude indicated he was receptive to the idea.

“I am prepared to explore it,” he said.

Working with Braude in the past, Yaroslavsky has been a leader in two successful citywide ballot initiatives: Proposition U, a 1986 measure to limit commercial development, and last year’s drive to block a beachfront oil drilling project by Occidental Petroleum Corp. in Pacific Palisades.

An initiative designed around spending policies for the poor could give Yaroslavsky something he has lacked to date--an issue that would unite Westside middle-class white liberals with blacks and Latinos from the city’s south and east sides.

Need for Coalition Told

“It would take a coalition of minorities and Westsiders that did not exist with Proposition U,” Yaroslavsky said.

Yaroslavsky would not say whether he has done any polling to support an initiative but, clearly, he would be counting on a growing public perception that the city’s leaders are not responding adequately to indications of a widening gap between rich and poor in this city.