Mayor Urges New Environmental Impact Policy : Developers: The proposal would give builders the option of letting the city pick a consultant for environmental studies.

Mayor Tom Bradley endorsed a plan Thursday to alter a system--much-maligned by homeowners and slow-growth advocates--that allowed developers to select and hire the private consultants who study the environmental impacts of their projects.

But a leader of the city’s largest umbrella homeowner group quickly denounced the mayor’s plan, calling it a sham. “This isn’t reform, it’s just change,” said Barbara Fine, vice president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assn.

Bradley’s plan offers two options to the developer. Under the first option, the developer would be offered a guarantee that his environmental impact report (EIR) would be completed and processed by the city in one year if the developer allowed the city to pick the consultant. This option would give the city the greatest control over preparation of the report.

The second option would simply allow the developer to “take his chances” on how quickly the city would process the project’s environmental review, and pick and hire his own consultant, said Brad Crowe, the Planning Department official who drafted the proposal. This would be the status quo option. The city would also make available to the developer a list of approved consultants from which to choose--but using the list would not be required.

At a news conference, Bradley said his program would help bring a new impartiality to an environmental review process that, he said, is dominated by the handpicked consultants hired to represent the selfish interests of their developer-clients.

Under the mayor’s plan, which was endorsed by several homeowner representatives and Councilman Marvin Braude, the city would have the “most progressive and objective EIR process in the country,” Bradley press secretary Bill Chandler said.

Bradley and Planning Department Director Kenneth Topping predicted that there would be developer resistance to the plan. They said the city plans to undertake the reforms gradually and embark on a sales job to persuade developers to accept the reforms and break their longstanding habits.

In the end, however, the developers should embrace the plan because it will shorten the time it takes City Hall to process their projects, Bradley and Topping said. Bradley said it now takes an average of 18 months to get an EIR completed and processed at City Hall, a span they said can be cut to 12 months.

Developers in the city of Los Angeles now select and hire the consultants who perform the environmental impact reports on their projects. These reports, often highly technical, are supposed to identify the impacts and propose ways, where possible, to mitigate the negative effects of a project.

For example, mitigations often require developers to reduce traffic congestion by widening streets, installing traffic signals and providing additional parking--all of which can be costly.

Critics complain that the Los Angeles system allows a developer’s consultant to assess a project’s impact, producing reviews that downplay the negatives and limiting the mitigation measures required of their clients.

Many California cities and counties select and pay consultants with taxpayer money. Making the consultants government contractors--not developer hirelings--helps ensure that the consultants produce an objective document, some municipal officials say.

Bradley and Topping said the ultimate goal of the plan unveiled Thursday involves having the city pick and hire the consultants.

But Crowe, Topping and Bradley’s planning aide, Deborah Murphy, said later that the plan would permit the status quo to continue. Later still, however, Chandler said the Bradley program “will lead to the point where the city, not the developer, will select the consultant to perform the EIR.”

Fine, the homeowner leader, said the plan shows the city “is going all out to appease developers by guaranteeing a fast-track approval process.” She also called it an “affront to homeowner groups.” Fine said her criticism of the plan has been informally endorsed by the executive board of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assn.

“It’s not our style to be as confrontational as this on issues, but this one is very important to us,” Fine said.

Fine said the city should not offer the developer options. Instead, the city should simply require that consultants picked, paid for and accountable to the city conduct the environmental reviews.

The city also should allow public participation in the now closed-door city bureaucracy that determines which building projects will require full environmental reviews, Fine said. Of the 1,400 projects reviewed annually by the Planning Department, only about 40 require full environmental reviews.

Reform in this respect should result in more projects having to undergo more scrutiny, Fine said.