CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS 12TH DISTRICT : Bernson vs. Korenstein : His land-use record shows he is not simply the pro-growth ideologue portrayed by opponents of the huge Porter Ranch development.

Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., feared a grim future for his slow-growth constituency when conservative Hal Bernson was chosen as chairman of the Los Angeles City Council Planning Committee in 1987. Bernson, he warned, would give developers a free rein. “I was scared,” he recalled.

But after four years of working with the north San Fernando Valley lawmaker on land-use issues, including enactment of a growth-control plan for Ventura Boulevard, Close’s view has softened. Bernson “has gotten a bum rap as being anti-homeowner and anti-neighborhood,” he said.

Close’s view is shared by many others who are regularly involved with City Hall. Bernson’s land-use record shows he is not simply the pro-growth ideologue portrayed by opponents of the huge Porter Ranch development. Instead, Bernson has often been a pragmatist, who sides with developers at times but who also is ready to accommodate homeowners on land-use issues, according to observers and city records.

“He’ll never get elected president of the Sierra Club,” Close said. “But Hal’s fair, a lot fairer than three-fourths of the council members.”

William Christopher, city planning commissioner and former leader in the Westside homeowner movement, said of Bernson: “I certainly wouldn’t put Hal in the slow-growth category. . . . But he’s not dogmatic. We’ve managed to work together on issues.”

Recalling Bernson’s support in her bitter battle to stop the Warner Ridge office complex in Woodland Hills, Councilwoman Joy Picus said of her embattled colleague: “He certainly wasn’t Mr. Pro-Development on that.”

Despite such testimonials, Bernson’s reputation persists as an automatic advocate of development and big business interests on land-use issues.

This image now spells trouble for the 60-year-old legislator as he heads toward a June 4 showdown with Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein in the toughest reelection fight of his career.

The April 9 primary election results vividly showed Bernson’s problem: The anti-Bernson vote was higher in neighborhoods closer to the huge project. In the dozen precincts nearest the development site, Bernson got only one of every five votes.

“It’s largely because of Porter Ranch that Hal has gotten tagged with the pro-development label,” said Councilman Michael Woo, who also sits on the Planning Committee. Woo was referring to Bernson’s unflagging support of the $2-billion, 1,300-acre development to be built over the next 20 years in the north part of his district.

But in fact the pro-growth label predates Porter Ranch.

Among the other positions that shaped the pro-growth label were Bernson’s votes to back a plan to drill for oil in the Pacific Palisades, to support major commercial and condominium developments in Westwood, and to endorse a legislative plan to weaken Proposition U, the hugely popular 1986 ballot measure that slashed the development rights of thousands of commercial properties citywide.

“Bernson just gives away the store to developers,” said Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino. “He can’t sit on the Planning Committee and time after time support big projects and Porter Ranch and get away with it.”

Yet there is evidence to support a contrary view. Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, for one, said he has seen a tamer Bernson emerge in recent years.

“In his earlier years, he was more conservative,” Yaroslavsky said. But Bernson “has been responsive to the changing climate” of homeowner-inspired reform that has been reshaping City Hall’s land-use policies and practices since the mid-1980s, he said.

A review of 12th District planning matters from recent years indicates this change in Bernson’s philosophy.

“Bernson sure hasn’t been our friend,” said Cathy Connelly, executive director of a citywide association of mobile home park owners. In fact, Connelly’s group--whose members own big chunks of 12th District real estate--has found Bernson hostile to its property interests.

With seven of the city’s 64 mobile home parks in the district, Bernson initiated a rezoning plan in 1989 to block park owners from redeveloping their sites for industrial or commercial uses. His initiative won kudos from trailer park tenants, the vast majority of whom are seniors.

On other 12th District planning issues:

* Bernson scored a land-use victory in the past year against a legion of lobbyists deployed by Browning-Ferris Industries--one of the nation’s largest solid waste management firms--as that company tried to expand garbage dumping on that portion of its Sunshine Canyon Landfill located in the city.

* When it came to light in February, 1990, that Mayor Tom Bradley’s office was reviewing a plan to build housing at Chatsworth Reservoir, Bernson sought to impose new zoning protections on the site so the 156-acre dry lake bed, owned by the city Department of Water and Power, would remain a de facto wildlife sanctuary.

* Although complicated by slippery jurisdictional issues, Bernson has tried to place city land-use controls over an ambitious Cal State Northridge plan to construct--in conjunction with one of the state’s biggest builders, Watt Investment Properties Inc. and major Bernson campaign contributor--a 200-room hotel and 11 office buildings on the northern area of the state campus.

In December, Bernson also directed city transportation officials to prepare a plan to relieve “to the greatest extent possible” the traffic impacts of CSUN’s so-called University Park project after an earlier city study expressed concern over its potential for clogging local streets.

* As hundreds of residents clamored for help, Bernson last year stopped a plan by Southern Pacific to develop a lumberyard on land it owns in Chatsworth, a project that would have sent a daily parade of heavy trucks through the neighborhood.

Bernson later proposed that the city help buy the Southern Pacific site and develop it as a commuter rail station to serve a network of Southern Pacific lines being purchased by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

* Bernson also quashed a plan by builder Kerry Seidenglanz, a Bernson campaign contributor, to put a seven-screen theater complex into his proposed 270,000-square-foot retail project near the Northridge Fashion Center. “Bernson stuck his sword right through the theaters,” said Rob Glushon, a land-use attorney for residents opposed to the cinemas and the president of Encino Property Owners Assn.

On land-use projects outside his district, Bernson’s practice has been “to follow the lead of the councilman of the district, even if that means offending developers,” fellow Planning Committee member Woo said.

For example, Bernson supported the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, which put a cap on new commercial development along the thoroughfare; he backed Picus’ 1990 plan to quash the Warner Ridge project, and he endorsed council President John Ferraro’s proposal to slash the proposed Farmer’s Market project in the Fairfax neighborhood.

Less conspicuous projects routinely get the same treatment.

In one of the many votes he casts weekly on a host of planning matters, Bernson recently sided with Councilman Marvin Braude, an outspoken slow-growth advocate, to oppose 39 Brentwood homeowners who wanted their land rezoned to permit condominium development. “We didn’t get what we wanted, and Bernson certainly didn’t help us,” said Mark Armbruster, the lobbyist for the homeowners from Braude’s district who requested the zone change.

Nor has Bernson’s role always been passive on major land-use issues in other districts. On his own initiative, Bernson required developers of the Central City West project--against their wishes--to build up to 3,500 units of market-rate housing as part of their huge annex to the city’s downtown commercial core, situated in former Councilwoman Gloria Molina’s district.

Others cite Bernson’s readiness in recent years to work on planning reforms. “We’ve made a lot of progress in recent years to manage our growth, and Hal has been part of this,” said Yaroslavsky, a leader in the city’s slow-growth movement. “He’s neither a Sierra Club saint nor is he going to get 100% rating from the building industry lobby.”

Bernson, for example, helped shape the city’s site plan review ordinance, which gives the council and the city’s planning director sweeping new authority over commercial projects.

The original site plan review ordinance called for environmental review of all new commercial projects over 40,000 square feet, a key feature of the slow-growth movement’s legislative agenda. But a Bernson amendment broadened this law to apply to plans for adding to an existing project if the final size would exceed 40,000 square feet, city records show.

Still, Bernson has sided with big business on several hotly contested land-use fights.

Notable here was Bernson’s support of Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s plan to drill for oil in the Pacific Palisades, a project that was anathema to Braude, the local representative. Later, Bernson joined Bradley to sign arguments opposing a ballot measure to block the drilling.

In a fierce 1984 debate, Bernson joined a council majority to back plans for building a half-dozen office towers in Westwood Village against the wishes of Yaroslavsky, who represents the area. And in 1988, Bernson led a successful move to exempt five high-rise condominium projects on Wilshire Boulevard from a Yaroslavsky-proposed moratorium.

Jerry Daniels, veteran homeowner activist, says Bernson’s instinctive support for development can be seen in his sponsorship of a motion, which has not been approved, to dilute the city’s slope-density formula. The formula, one of the homeowner movement’s most cherished legislative achievements, is more restrictive toward hillside developments with steep slopes.

On the other hand, Daniels, chairman emeritus of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., an umbrella organization for several dozen homeowner groups, said: “I would not characterize Bernson as a flunky of development interests. I think he’s very pragmatic. He recognizes that the city is going to continue to grow and that we must try to accommodate this.”

Foreseeing the perils of having the June 4 election become a referendum on his land-use record, Bernson has tried to shift the political debate to law-and-order issues, where he feels he is on safer ground.

In fact, the 12th District lawmaker has been a reliable Los Angeles Police Department booster and recently has led council efforts to protect Chief Daryl F. Gates from being disciplined as a result of the Rodney G. King beating controversy.

But records also show that Bernson did not play a leading role in the several major City Hall initiatives of the past four years to beef up police manpower. He voted for these measures, but was not in the forefront.

In fact, in early 1985, only months before he began a two-year stint as chairman of the council’s Police Committee, Bernson opposed a tax to pay for hiring 1,000 additional officers. Bernson has said he believed the city should fund a bigger police force from existing revenues. Monday, Bernson was among a minority of four lawmakers who voted to kill a 10% entertainment admissions tax billed by its sponsors as a way to prevent the loss through attrition of 400 police officers.

The police positions could be saved by budget cuts in other city departments, Bernson said. Bernson, however, has not proposed any specific cuts to accomplish this goal.

One of Bernson’s chief legislative accomplishments has little to do with the 12th District. It is his authorship of a 1981 law to require thousands of the city’s older brick buildings, few of which are in his district, to be structurally hardened to withstand a major earthquake.

Bernson also has been active in other quake safety-related issues. One of these stemmed from complaints that low-income tenants, who inhabit many of the city’s aging brick buildings, were facing eviction or large rent increases as their landlords sought to comply with Bernson’s 1981 law.

In the resulting clash between competing needs--to provide safe housing and to maintain affordable housing--Bernson’s focus remained “on the life-safety issue,” city rent control chief Barbara Zeidman said. “He was less concerned with the tenant issues.”

Yet Bernson authored a 1986 amendment that requires landlords to pay tenant relocation aid if they elect to demolish their buildings rather than pay to strengthen them against quakes, Zeidman said. And in 1990, he sponsored a $100-million bond measure to provide low-interest loans to nonprofit housing agencies seeking to bring their buildings up to seismic safety standards.

“His seismic safety law is a serious, a very serious accomplishment,” Yaroslavsky said recently. “If he did nothing else, he could be proud of this.”

BACKGROUND

City Councilman Hal Bernson and challenger Julie Korenstein, a Los Angeles Unified School District board member, are vying for the District 12 council seat. Bernson was forced into the June 4 runoff election by failing to receive more than half the vote in an election April 9. The three-term incumbent received 35% of the vote, while Korenstein received 29%.