Policy That Puts No One in Charge

There are few things the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors love more than a good courtroom fight.

The supervisors have dispatched their lawyers to fight the efforts of the homeless mentally ill to gain easier access to shelter and food. They are opposing courtroom demands on behalf of children who are sexually abused in county-supervised foster homes. And of course, in their biggest legal battle, the supervisors are resisting the U.S. government. The Justice Department has sued the county over lack of Latino representation on the board.

Thus it is surprising to learn that the supervisors backed away from a courtroom showdown with Abraham M. Lurie, a developer who leases prime waterfront land from the county at Marina del Rey and then builds on it. Over the years, Lurie has become the major leaseholder there, erecting a hotel, apartment, office building and retail empire.

As a tenant, Lurie would drive most landlords nuts. His delinquent county property taxes reached almost $1 million before he paid them off. And he has yet to build a promised nine-story hotel on one of his sites. When the county demanded to see some action, Lurie had some pilings driven into the ground. Meanwhile, he pays just $1,001 a month in rent for the land, which is worth millions of dollars.

Stories in The Times this week revealed that Lurie was in financial trouble. To bail himself out, he sold a substantial portion of his holdings to businessmen he would not name. The stories, however, identified Lurie’s new partners as wealthy Saudi businessmen with a liking for secrecy.

The stories raised two questions: Why didn’t the supervisors demand to know the identity of the purchasers, and why did they permit Lurie to treat his obligations to the county treasury in such a slow-paying manner? Why didn’t the county take him to court, as most landlords would do?

Lurie is one of the largest contributors to supervisorial political campaigns. A big campaign contribution might have some influence, but it usually isn’t enough to make that kind of a difference. It is just one part of the puzzle.

I asked county lawyers and private attorneys if there is another, more complex, reason why the supervisors treated Lurie so gently.

The pragmatic answer I got was that a lawsuit would have driven Lurie into bankruptcy. The complex actions in bankruptcy court would have tied up the county for years, preventing it from evicting Lurie and turning the land over to another developer. It was better, the attorneys said, to save him so he could continue paying rent.

That cautious approach seems inconsistent with the supervisors’ tactics in other cases, where their attorneys pursue adversaries in an aggressive, scorched-earth fashion. The reason goes to the heart of what ails Los Angeles County government today.

Marina del Rey, owned entirely by the county, contains some of the world’s most valuable real estate. It has been pretty much the domain of whichever supervisor is representing the 4th District, which runs the length of the county coastline. First it was Burton Chace, when the county developed the marina in the 1960s. Then it was Jim Hayes, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and now Deane Dana. The 4th District supervisor sets policy, and the others do not interfere.

That’s the way things are done in the county. Each supervisor is boss of his district, a sensible arrangement when it comes to handling local problems but bad public policy when the issue has implications for the entire county. In this case, it was particularly bad public policy.

By the ‘70s, it was clear that the marina was pure gold. Yet, the politically influential leaseholders were able to resist rent increases that county officials now privately admit should have been imposed on them.

The county agency responsible for the marina is the Department of Beaches and Parks. But its director has always been under the 4th District supervisor’s thumb, a condition that has intensified ever since the supervisors were given broad power over executives’ salaries. Disobedience now can cost a pay raise.

Efforts have been made to break this pattern and tighten control over the marina. Supervisor Pete Schabarum and County Administrative Officer Richard Dixon got the county to hire an attorney, Richard Riordan, who negotiated rent increases.

But those were surface fixes. The story of the gentle treatment accorded tenant Lurie shows the situation is in need of basic repair. The Board of Supervisors was theoretically in charge. Fourth District Supervisor Dana and Beaches and Parks chief Ted Reed were nominally responsible. But really, nobody was in charge.