Records Show Mayor Intervened for Builder : City Hall: The developer has been a fund-raiser for Bradley. A mayoral aide denies any impropriety.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has repeatedly intervened with city and federal agencies to help a campaign fund-raiser whose housing developments figure prominently in an expanding political corruption probe, records and interviews show.

Bradley’s efforts on behalf of developer Harold R. Washington, The Times found, have spanned at least the last seven years and primarily involved city-subsidized, low-income housing projects proposed or built by Washington and his associates.

The relationship between Washington and Bradley is one focus of an ongoing investigation by Los Angeles police and the district attorney’s office into allegations that the developer made political contributions or payments to Bradley and other city officials to obtain assistance for his projects.

Records and interviews show:

* Bradley personally arranged or presided over at least nine City Hall meetings involving Washington, several with city housing officials who were making crucial decisions regarding Washington’s projects and proposals.

* The mayor or his staff called city officials on at least two occasions to get status reports when Washington’s projects faced bureaucratic hurdles.

* Bradley encouraged another developer to relinquish ownership of prime property in the Crenshaw District that Washington wanted for a housing development.

Last week Bradley declined to be interviewed about his relationship with Washington, but through his press secretary, Bill Chandler, denied any impropriety and said that his actions only were attempts to encourage development of affordable housing.

“Mr. Washington has been a longtime supporter of the mayor,” Chandler said. “However, let there be no mistake, campaign contributions do not impact the decisions of the mayor’s office.

“In all the cases you’ve described, the mayor has not been a decision maker,” he added. “The mayor would certainly support a low-income housing project or one that would help revitalize the Crenshaw District. But it is clear that the Community Redevelopment Agency and the Housing Authority were the agencies making decisions here.”

Washington said last week that he never has received improper assistance from the mayor or other officials. “I’m . . . positive (Bradley) never did anything for me in return for contributions,” he said. “No person I ever gave a dime to went out of the way to help me.”

The probe began early this year as an outgrowth of a city investigation of state labor law violations at a project that Washington was promoting. In the course of the wage investigation, police developed informants who alleged political corruption.

Authorities said they are trying to determine if Bradley or other officials violated the law by assisting Washington on several projects in exchange for political contributions or other favors.

Of particular interest to investigators is Sheridan Manor, a controversial city-subsidized Community Redevelopment Agency housing project for which Washington served as a developer and consultant. Last October, records show, Bradley approved an unusual city appeal for federal taxpayer funds to bail out the project, which was over budget and far behind schedule and was under investigation for alleged state labor law violations.

Investigators envision that the Sheridan Manor probe will expand into a sweeping inquiry into possible influence peddling in the award of contracts and grants in a number of Los Angeles city departments, according to authorities. The investigation will examine the role of politically connected consultants, such as Washington, in securing city contracts, sources said.

Washington, 70, said he considers Bradley a friend and that their relationship goes back more than 50 years, when the two attended rival high schools in Los Angeles.

Over the last several years, Washington has personally donated more than $22,000 to Bradley’s campaigns and helped raise tens of thousands more by arranging events and filling tables at campaign dinners, according to interviews and public records.

A prominent Republican fund-raiser in Los Angeles, Washington said he has brought GOP contributors and voters into Bradley’s camp. He also said he has helped organize get-out-the-vote telephone banks for the mayor’s campaigns, and recruited election volunteers at a government-subsi-dized seniors housing project that he developed near the Crenshaw Shopping Center.

“I’ve got 250 people sitting (around),” he said. “(I tell them) go over and work for Tom Bradley.”

Investigators are interested in Washington’s political activities because two former business associates have told police that Washington claimed that “money for politicians was necessary” for the success of the Sheridan Manor project, according to a police affidavit filed in support of a warrant to search Washington’s office.

“There is so much activity there, so much extraneous political involvement, there appears there’s a possibility of undue influence,” said a source familiar with the investigation.

Washington said the allegations against him are false and came from disgruntled former associates whom he had removed from the Sheridan Manor project.

Investigators have seized voluminous city and business records pertaining to Washington and his projects. City officials, Washington, his business associates and others have been interviewed by police. Washington said that investigators seized his financial records and asked whether he received political favors in return for contributions to Bradley and others.

In the early 1980s, Washington was developing Baldwin Villa Plaza, a 240-unit seniors complex adjacent to the Crenshaw Shopping Center. The complex involved the largest city housing bond ever issued--more than $12 million.

When Washington ran into increased construction costs because of soil problems, Bradley called a meeting at City Hall with Washington and Doug Ford, then-head of the city Community Development Department that was financing the project. “I wanted everyone to know the difficulties of the project . . . that (had) added more costs,” Washington said.

Later the city provided an additional $600,000 subsidy, Washington said.

Ford said that the meeting was unusual in that few such projects ever directly involved the mayor. Washington “was just trying to maximize the assistance he would get,” he added.

Although Bradley’s interest in the project meant that Baldwin Villa Plaza received more personal attention than other projects, Ford said that Washington did not receive special treatment and did not get all the funds he requested.

A few years later, Washington set his sights on another housing project--this one to be built on Santa Rosalia Drive, also near the Crenshaw Shopping Center. After he was outbid by a major Westside housing firm--Goldrich, Kest & Associates--Washington appealed to politicians for support. “I thought it should come to a black man,” he said. “I made that pitch to everybody that would listen.”

Washington said the mayor’s assistance on the matter “could have been the reason” that Goldrich Kest later sold him the property.

City records show Robert Hirsch, a Goldrich Kest partner, wrote a top city housing official in May, 1986, to confirm the sale of the property to Washington. “As you know, we cooperated with Mr. Washington at the express wishes of both Councilwoman Pat Russell and Mayor Tom Bradley,” Hirsch wrote.

In a recent interview, Hirsch said he could not recall why he included the reference to Russell and Bradley. Russell said she urged the two developers to cooperate, but did not pressure Goldrich Kest into selling.

The mayor’s office declined to comment.

Last summer, Bradley personally intervened again on the Santa Rosalia project. Community Development Department General Manager Parker Anderson said the mayor called him and asked him to determine whether Washington’s development proposal was feasible and appropriate.

As a result, Anderson met with Washington, who was seeking as much as $15 million in city bond money and a $2-million city loan to build affordable condominiums.

In a memo, Anderson later told Bradley that Washington’s proposal appeared feasible, and he promised to keep the mayor “apprised of our progress.” Anderson said Washington’s proposal, which is still pending, will go through normal reviews.

Dave Perel, a city housing official who attended the meeting with Anderson and Washington, said the referral by the mayor was unusual.

Authorities say they also are looking at the relationship between Washington and former City Councilman David Cunningham and CRA Administrator John J. Tuite, who had served as paid consultants to Washington on Sheridan Manor at times when they were not in public office.

Tuite has said that he did nothing improper and made no decisions involving Sheridan Manor after joining the CRA in 1986.

In an interview late last year, Tuite said he recalled attending at least one meeting with Washington and the mayor--but not any meetings involving Sheridan Manor. “When the mayor calls a meeting at his office, I go,” said Tuite, who described Washington as “always chasing after opportunities.”

Bradley’s involvement with Washington on Sheridan Manor dates back at least seven years, records and interviews show. The recently completed project is actually two apartment buildings--a 70-unit complex known as St. James Square near MacArthur Park and 90-unit Tuelyn Terrace in Koreatown. The CRA has provided a $900,000 loan to subsidize the project.

During a separate criminal investigation last year into alleged labor violations at Sheridan Manor, Washington’s former associates in the project told authorities that Washington won the project because of his political connections.

The informants--identified as former Washington business associates Stan Washington and Glenn Session--alleged that Washington told them that some of the $100,000 they invested in the project was needed to buy political influence, according to the police affidavit.

In an interview, Session said Washington told potential investors that “he had political connections. He’d say things are going to happen . . . and then it would happen.”

For example, Session said, Washington predicted that he could persuade city and federal housing officials to allow a private developer to rehabilitate the buildings.

In May, 1984, after what Washington described in a memo as a “long discussion” with Bradley, the mayor wrote then-U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Samuel R. Pierce asking that a private developer be allowed to rehabilitate the buildings. Later HUD agreed.

After several developers submitted bids to the city, Washington’s team was chosen. “Washington and his group apparently had the lowest bid,” Bradley said in a statement last month. “I knew nothing about the bidding process. Had no input whatsoever.”

Bradley’s office intervened last spring after city inspectors halted rehabilitation work on a Sheridan Manor building that lacked a needed permit. The mayor’s office called Building and Safety officials and asked them to investigate whether it was “really necessary to stop the work,” said Karl Deppe, head of the earthquake safety division.

Building and safety officials could not recall who called from the mayor’s office. Bradley spokesman Chandler said, after checking with staff, that “we have no indication anyone called building and safety.” Deppe, who said the mayor’s office rarely inquires about such cases, reported back that the stop-work order was appropriate. But the permit process may have been expedited to allow the work to proceed, he said.

Last summer, while the project was suffering cost overruns, Washington and his partners went to the mayor again. They complained that a request for rent subsidies had been turned down by the city’s Housing Authority.

In July, Bradley toured one of Sheridan Manor’s buildings at Washington’s request and a month later held a meeting in his office with Washington and city housing officials to discuss the project.

“The mayor basically asked us what’s the story,” recalled Joseph Shuldiner, the city’s Housing Authority chief, but made no direct request that housing officials reverse themselves. Sheridan Manor had been rejected for city rent subsidies because it ranked “way down on the list” of projects, he said.

Later, housing officials changed their minds. They decided to ask HUD Secretary Jack Kemp for federal rent subsidies or a grant that would allow the city to buy out the Sheridan Manor developers. Bradley was notified of their decision and approved the letter they sent to Kemp. But Chandler said the mayor at no point instructed the housing agency to make the request.

So far Washington’s efforts to obtain the federal help have been unsuccessful.

While Washington was enlisting the mayor’s help last summer, the project was under investigation by city redevelopment officials for alleged prevailing wage violations. Washington and a principal partner in Sheridan Manor later were charged with misdemeanor violations of the state labor code for allegedly underpaying workers. The partner, Jerome Steinbaum of Beverly Hills, pleaded no contest and agreed to cooperate in the corruption probe. Washington has pleaded not guilty to the wage charges and faces trial next month.

CRA Housing Director John Maguire said that he had advised the mayor last August of allegations of wage kickbacks by a Sheridan Manor construction contractor, but did not inform him that the project’s developers, including Washington, were under investigation by the CRA for wage violations.

The mayor’s office declined to comment.

Washington strongly defends the project, saying he should be given “an award for doing an outstanding job” of rehabilitating vacant, “garbage” buildings for low-cost inner-city housing. Washington said his compensation--which he estimates at $400,000--will come only when the project is finished and sold to a syndicate of investors.