Panel Named to Make Changes in Planning Agency : Government: A nine-member task force will follow up on recommendations in a management audit.

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson on Monday named nine top city officials, including Mayor Tom Bradley, to a task force to review and implement scores of recommendations proposed in a just-completed management audit of the city Planning Department.

“I’ve been waiting for the ammo to do some changes in the department for a long time,” said Bernson, who chairs the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee. “Now we’ve got it.”

Among the audit’s top findings was that the Planning Department’s land-use advice and workload are frequently influenced by political factors, accompanied by a recommendation that the department’s next chief be an independent-minded visionary.

Bernson said it was not the evidence of political interference that bothered him most about the audit findings, but evidence of how long it takes the department to process developers’ projects.

“Politics is not the real problem,” Bernson said. “The big thing is the massive amount of time delays in processing land-use matters.”

The audit, Bernson noted, was especially critical of the department’s environmental review section, which it said takes two to three years to clear a project. “This system is totally out of whack,” Bernson said.

Two weeks before the audit’s findings were published by The Times, Bradley took aim at the department’s apparent inefficiencies and chastised its staff for its slowness in processing environmental impact reports.

Such delays may seem to work to the advantage of homeowners and environmental groups seeking to slow growth, but in fact they result in higher costs for a project that are then passed on to consumers, Bernson said.

The 298-page audit, which came up with 267 recommendations, was conducted by Zucker Systems, a San Diego-based consulting firm.

Implementation of the Zucker audit’s recommendations would require $23.9 million and result in a major overhaul of a department that plays a key role in shaping important land-use issues in the San Fernando Valley and throughout the city, including the development controls and privileges granted in the Porter Ranch and Ventura Boulevard specific plans.

In addition to Bradley and himself, Bernson named to the task force City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie, City Atty. James K. Hahn, Chief Legislative Analyst William R. McCarley, Planning Commission President William G. Luddy, Councilman Mike Woo and the chairman of the city’s One-Stop Permit Committee, former Councilman Robert Wilkinson.

Bernson said that “everybody’s agreed to serve.”

Bill Chandler, Bradley’s press secretary, said Bernson has also agreed to a Bradley request that the city’s new Planning Department chief, when appointed in a “couple of months,” serve on the panel.

It would be “impossible to discuss the full implementation of the reforms without the new director,” Chandler said.

Since the resignation late last year of Planning Director Kenneth C. Topping, the department has been run by acting Director Melanie Fallon.

Bernson predicted that the high-level task force will remain in existence for some time. “You can’t wave a magic wand and make the changes,” he said. “There’s going to be a continued need for oversight to see that the changes are actually implemented.”

Task force meetings, however, will generally not be public, Bernson said. Public meetings are “not productive for anybody.”

But there will be at least one open meeting, he said.