New Round Opens Over Soka Land : Development: Tom Hayden, an opponent of the school’s plans to expand its campus, seeks an end to the university’s tax-exempt status.

Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) has asked state and federal tax officials to consider revoking Soka University’s tax-exempt status, opening a new round in the battle to prevent the school from expanding its campus in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Hayden, who is opposed to Soka’s plans to build a 4,400-student campus on 580 acres it owns north of Malibu--and which environmentalists say should be used as parkland--also said he will introduce legislation to prevent Soka from calling itself a university. Hayden is chairman of the Assembly Committee on Higher Education.

Last week, Hayden accused Soka of misusing the university name “to mask its essentially business and religious purposes.” He said taxpayers should not have to subsidize Soka’s plans to develop the campus on property better suited for parkland.

The Japan-based school, which is not accredited, now uses the mountain campus to offer English classes to about 150 Japanese students.

State and federal agencies have long coveted the Soka campus--surrounded by Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area--as a park headquarters, but Soka refuses to sell. The property is located along Mulholland Highway at Las Virgenes Road, near Calabasas.

“It ultimately comes down to whether the Legislature and the public think (Soka’s development plan) is a good use of the land,” Hayden said. “I say no.”

Although his planned legislation would have no bearing on Soka’s tax status, Hayden said forcing Soka to give up its claim to being a university would help the public and government agencies that must approve its plans get a better picture of what Soka is attempting to do.

“It’s a credibility issue,” he said. “It may affect some minds to say you’re a university and want a bucolic university in the mountains. But if that’s not true and you’ve misrepresented yourself, then I think the people who give the permits ought to be in a position to take a second look.”

The lawmaker’s remarks at a news conference on Thursday drew an angry response from Soka officials.

“It’s pretty apparent to the university that Mr. Hayden, who has been brainwashed before, has been brainwashed again,” university spokeswoman Bernetta Reade said.

She said Soka remains committed to establishing an accredited four-year university with an international student body. “Frankly, if we didn’t have to respond to stuff like this, we would probably be further along in the process.”

Meanwhile, Soka won a surprise victory in Washington last week when a key Senate committee adopted language that would prevent park officials from using federal funds to take over the school’s campus through condemnation proceedings.

Opponents of the expansion plans, caught off-guard by the action Wednesday, said they will push to have the condemnation language removed when a committee of House and Senate lawmakers takes up the matter.

Julie Zeidner, a spokeswoman for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which wants the Soka site for its headquarters, said that Soka’s plans are “devastating for the mountains.”

Zeidner, who attended the Hayden news conference, added, “Anyone who visits the site will understand why we’re so outraged. It is made for a park, not a university.”

Hayden’s press conference came on the heels of another setback for Soka’s foes on Wednesday in Sacramento, where staff members at a state agency that regulates higher education said they have no authority over Soka because it is more of a business than a school.

The state Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education concluded that “the current operations of Soka University of Los Angeles (are) not in our jurisdiction.”

The conclusion was part of a letter from the council’s assistant director to Hayden, who three weeks ago called on the agency to investigate “the university’s legal status and educational program.”

Hayden contends that Soka has “misled the public” by acquiring tax-exempt status as an institute of higher education even though it offers no advanced courses and confers no degrees.

The lawmaker said that since Soka acquired the campus in 1987 it had benefited from tax exemptions “in the tens of millions of dollars” while pursuing its plans to develop a full-fledged university at a location that “is clearly not in the public’s interest.”

Staff writers Alan C. Miller in Washington and Mark Gladstone in Sacramento contributed to this story.