Squabbling Continues Over Conservation District’s Assets

When the state dissolved the Northwestern Los Angeles Resource Conservation District in 1985, the agency’s assets were to be divided between the county’s two remaining conservation districts. The amount involved--about $95,000--was a paltry one by big-government standards, and the players were not exactly political high rollers either.

But more than five years later, the obscure and problem-ridden agency’s assets have yet to be dispersed between the two surviving districts, and bitterness continues to mar relations between just about everyone involved in the controversy.

Although a lengthy legal dispute has finally been settled between the county and former directors of the defunct government agency, other conservation officials now anticipate a new battle over which programs will be favored when the cash is at last meted out.

At issue are leftover funds from the Northwestern Los Angeles Resource Conservation District, which was abolished by the state Legislature in January, 1985, after years of infighting, alleged mismanagement and a district attorney’s investigation that ultimately cleared agency directors of criminal wrongdoing.

After the district disbanded, the County Board of Supervisors was supposed to divide any remaining assets between the Antelope Valley and Topanga-Las Virgenes resource conservation districts. Both agencies promote the preservation of natural resources such as soil and water, a service created after many farms were destroyed by soil erosion in the 1930s.

Before the Northwestern district was dissolved, some of its directors formed a private group--the Foundation for Resource Conservation--to carry out the district’s mission and then transferred the title of a district-owned house into the foundation’s name.

Jonathan B. Crane, the deputy county counsel who negotiated a settlement last May with the foundation after a five-year lawsuit to obtain the house, characterized its members as “well-intentioned but misguided zealots” who mistrusted the county and wanted to ensure the money’s use on conservation programs.

Crane said he was happy with the outcome of the case, noting that the delay enabled the district’s Granada Hills house to more than double in value--leaving between $180,000 and $190,000 for conservation programs after expenses. The district purchased the house for about $95,000 in January, 1984, he said. It was transferred to the foundation in November, 1984, and it sold in March for $207,500.

But bitter foundation directors still blame the dissolution of the district on a conspiracy by politicians, developers and the media and expressed lingering doubts about settling out of court with their archenemy--the county of Los Angeles.

“I think the dissolving of the district was a treasonous act by a conspiracy to dissolve it,” said Daniel Cooper, a former director now working as a conservation consultant. “All subsequent court cases were just part of the effort to impede conservation on the part of the people in the county.”

But directors of other districts say it took the county far too long to gain control of the assets.

“It was an ongoing situation that no one was controlling,” said David Gottlieb, a director of the Topanga-Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District. “Our resource district runs nationally known programs like our education program, and we desperately need the money. . . . It’s a shame that the funds have been tied up for so long,” he said.

During the years the foundation owned the house at 17175 Chatsworth St. in Granada Hills, it maintained a small library there of environmental magazines and newsletters, hosted occasional meetings and rented out a bedroom to a college student to pay for property taxes, said Crane and Glenn Bailey, the foundation’s chief spokesman.

Gottlieb said Cooper and others in the foundation intermittently lived in the house “rent-free”--an example, he charged, of their ongoing misuse of public funds.

But Bailey and other foundation members denied the charge. Cooper said he had served as the house’s caretaker but did not actually live there. Crane said he had found no evidence that they used any district assets for personal gain.

“None were dressing nicely, driving a spanking car, eating steak and lobster,” Crane said. “There wasn’t any acting like Richard Pryor in the ‘Superman’ movie, where he takes a penny out of everyone’s paycheck and shows up the next day in a Ferrari.”

To the added chagrin of Gottlieb and other conservationists, the settlement agreement gives the foundation a powerful voice in determining how the old district’s money will be spent, stating, “these funds shall only be allocated to mutually agreeable programs.”

The settlement gives priority to conservation programs in the areas once served by the Northwestern district, including the Santa Clarita Valley, Chatsworth Reservoir, Pierce College and the Sepulveda Basin.

“These guys were so corrupt they led to the dissolution of their own district, and now they’re coaching us and telling us they have a say in whether we get these funds. I mean, it seems absurd,” Gottlieb said.

Richard Campbell, a Lancaster-based conservationist for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service who has worked with all three districts, said he thought it was important for the surviving districts to have ultimate say over how the money is used.

“It’s kind of funny we’d let a district go down the tubes and then let its directors form another agency,” Campbell said.

Topanga-Las Virgenes district, which runs on a yearly budget of about $200,000, has proposed several uses for the money, including reforestation of Santa Catalina Island and a study of the effects of development on geese wintering in the San Fernando Valley. The list of proposed projects is still being revised, and Gottlieb and other directors complained of conflicting instructions from county and foundation officials.

The Antelope Valley district, which spends about $100,000 a year, has proposed expanding its windbreak program. The program raises trees on a 20-acre, district-owned nursery and sells them to farmers and other landowners to prevent erosion.

The Antelope Valley district may soon obtain another source of cash--from the planned sale of 60 acres it owns west of Lancaster. Ray Krueger, president of the Antelope Valley district board, estimated that the land could bring in $2 million and provide the district with a healthy income from interest.

Gottlieb and other Topanga-Las Virgenes directors said the Antelope Valley’s land sale should entitle their district to a greater share of Northwestern’s assets. But Krueger said the money should be evenly split, adding:

“They have their programs, and we have ours, and technically, we’re all equal.”