Park Service Role in Land Swap Is Criticized : Congress: Increasingly, the focus shifts to the Board of Supervisors, where the proposed Jordan Ranch property exchange appears to hang in the balance.

The National Park Service’s handling of a proposed swap of public land for property owned by entertainer Bob Hope in Los Angeles and Ventura counties was severely criticized during a congressional hearing Thursday, but the session was not expected to dampen the exchange’s prospects.

Political machinations, confusion and ambiguity have marked the Park Service’s handling of the Jordan Ranch swap, said Mike Synar (D-Okla.), chairman of the House environment, energy and natural resources subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee, which held the hearing.

“This process stinks,” he said.

At the same time, however, Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), an influential House Interior Committee member and the leading congressional critic of federal land swaps, testified that the Hope trade offers tremendous benefits to the public even though the process has been fraught with problems. Greater public scrutiny has made the controversial deal increasingly attractive through recent concessions by Hope, he said.

It was the second in a series of hearings that Synar’s oversight panel is holding on the land-swap approval process nationwide. Some opponents of the Hope exchange had hoped the intense scrutiny by the committee might lead Congress to determine that it, rather than the Park Service, should decide its fate. Synar said after the hearing that this was not his intention.

Instead, the hearing offered the latest indication that key members of the House either support or are unwilling to block the swap. This shifts the focus increasingly to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, where the deal appears to hang in the balance.

Park Service Director James M. Ridenour reiterated that his agency has not taken a position on trading 59 acres it owns in Cheeseboro Canyon for 1,100 acres of Hope property on the adjacent Jordan Ranch in eastern Ventura County. Also, Hope has agreed to transfer another 4,600 acres of his holdings in the Santa Monica and Santa Susana Mountains to parks agencies for a below-market price of $10 million if the land swap is approved.

Ridenour said the Park Service will not act until the Ventura supervisors decide whether to rezone the remainder of Hope’s property on the 2,308-acre Jordan Ranch to permit construction of 750 housing units. Potomac Investment Associates, which has an option on the Jordan Ranch, is seeking the Cheeseboro parcel for an access road from the Ventura Freeway to the proposed subdivision and a PGA Tournament golf course.

The upset election on June 5 of Maria VanderKolk, who opposes the project, has given the five-member board three members who are publicly opposed to the rezoning. Current zoning would permit construction of only 14 to 28 housing units. The county is completing its draft environmental impact review, which is expected shortly.

“We still need to wait for the county to give us some direction,” Ridenour said after the hearing. He said the Park Service is reviewing its own draft environmental impact review but will not release it until the county’s environmental report is made public.

The exchange of Jordan Ranch and Cheeseboro Canyon, situated within the boundaries of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, has split the environmental community.

Opponents maintain that the park should pursue its original goal of buying Jordan Ranch and preserving scenic, oak-dotted Cheeseboro rather than setting the precedent of promoting development. Proponents respond that they lack the money to purchase Jordan Ranch and face the likely development of Jordan Ranch and the other Hope properties if the swap falls through.

Synar said that the Park Service’s handling of Jordan Ranch demonstrates the need to adopt guidelines for conducting land swaps so that developers, who often initiate such exchanges, are not able to run roughshod over the public interest.

“The project is alive only because of the political influence by developers,” Synar said. “In the end, the Jordan Ranch swap may go forward; it may be widely supported but as the product of a remarkable recovery, not the product of a logical outcome of a sane and deliberate process.”

Synar was alluding to a series of events in 1987 when Potomac Investment Associates was initially rebuffed by Department of the Interior officials, including then Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area Superintendent Daniel R. Kuehn, when they sought to acquire the southwestern corner of Cheeseboro.

But PGA attorney William Fairfield went over their heads with a letter to William P. Horn, then assistant Interior secretary in charge of the National Park Service, asking him to reconsider. Fairfield invoked the name of William Clark, his onetime law partner and former Interior secretary in the Reagan Administration, three times in the letter.

Horn told the Park Service officials to give the idea another hearing.

Subsequently, an aide to Horn informed a regional director of the Park Service that: “The park could likely work something out with them that would be to everyone’s advantage. . . . Park needs to approach this with an open mind.” The note, handwritten by Allan K. Fitzsimmons, then assistant secretary to Fish and Wildlife and Parks, was released Thursday by Synar.

Kuehn subsequently announced his support in a May 10, 1988, letter to Peter Kyros, Potomac’s general partner, one day after Potomac had resubmitted the plan, Synar said.

Ridenour, who was not Park Service director at that time, told Synar’s subcommittee that this was “the chitchat of a superintendent, not the director of the National Park Service. He has no authority to make a final decision.”

Moreover, he said of Fairfield’s letter to Horn: “As far as I am concerned, it had no influence.”

Synar, however, concluded, “Unfortunately, this fact makes it appear that land decisions in previous administrations were controlled by who you knew and not what you wanted to do. And that’s wrong.”

Synar was also critical of the process of determining that the lands being exchanged are of equal value, as required by law. Ridenour said the Park Service would not do its appraisals until after the environmental reviews were completed and Ventura County had made its decision.

Despite his criticism of the process, Synar said in an interview after the hearing that it was not his role to assess the merits of the proposal itself.