Fighting Bureaucracy All the Way

Last Wednesday, the phone rang. It was Bernard Rosen, vice president of the West Wilshire Senior Citizens Club.

The layers of government bureaucracy have long been stacked against this group of elderly people as it seeks a more spacious and congenial meeting place, and Rosen calls me from time to time to brief me on the battles against various city, county and state officials. Now he had a fresh bulletin.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Something’s happening.” We agreed to meet Friday afternoon in the lobby of his apartment building in Park La Brea.

He greeted me at the apartment house door--brisk at 84, eyes bright, shoulders back. As an insurance company lawyer in New York, he fought and won many a battle in that big league of legal practice.

Clearly, this is a man who doesn’t believe in the old adage that you can’t fight City Hall.

The trouble is, Rosen not only has to fight City Hall, he’s been forced to take on the state Capitol, as well.

The controversy revolves around a senior center occupying a corner of a large community center in West Wilshire Park. More than 1,000 people use it, gathering for lunch, lectures, library and other activities. But they are outnumbered and out-shouted by teen-age basketball players and small children in preschool and after-school classes.

“Vandalism, overcrowding and congestion” are part of life in the center, said Rosen. “We are pushed and shoved and occasionally threatened. . . .”

Years of complaints prompted city officials to put together funds last year from a variety of sources, adding up to $2 million for a new center. The area councilman, John Ferraro, supported the project.

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough room in West Wilshire Park for the new building. But there’s plenty of space in the adjacent Pan Pacific Park, owned by the state and operated by the county. In fact, a Pan Pacific Park parking lot at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Gardner Avenue looked like an ideal site.

Ferraro and County Supervisor Ed Edelman backed the plan. With all of the local politicians on board, you’d think approval was certain.

That’s not the case. A bureaucratic roadblock materialized in the person of Henry Agonia, director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation.

Agonia, or his assistants, nit-picked their way through the law and found language that stopped the new center. Facilities in state parks, Agonia said, “should be dedicated to the general public’s use.” The senior center, Agonia said, “is too limited for a state park which is dedicated for the use and enjoyment of the general public.”

In Agonia’s eyes, the city was going to build some posh exclusionary club for the seniors, a Mid-Wilshire version of downtown’s California Club.

As a matter of fact, the land is hardly a park. It is an asphalt-covered parking lot, surrounded by an ugly wire fence.

Whatever its merits, the opinion paralyzed city and state officials. As Rosen’s anger grew, he told a neighborhood newspaper reporter, Melanie Murphy, “We need action now. After all, we’re not getting any younger.”

I wrote a column about the center. But I figured it was a loser. I had met a lot of bureaucrats like Henry Agonia in covering government, and they usually won.

In the months since we’d last talked, however, Rosen had not quit. Rather, he’d decided to fight Agonia.

He analyzed Agonia’s ruling against the park as just one man’s opinion. Rosen had gone to the law library in Beverly Hills and spent hours researching state law to find language that convinced him that the use of the parking lot “is proper, valid and is not prohibited by any state statute.”

That was the language in the legal brief he prepared on the issue. “A pretty good brief,” he pointed out. “Not as good as I did in the old days, but pretty good.”

He took the brief to the office of Senate President David A. Roberti of Los Angeles, who has a lot of power over the parks budget. Roberti assistant Ken Watson was impressed by the work and sent it on to Roberti.

But Rosen knows you have to play the media game to keep politicians on their toes. He wanted me to write another column, to make sure Roberti talks to parks chief Agonia.

So I’m doing it.

Senator, I’d advise you to do what Bernard Rosen says. He never gives up.

And Henry Agonia, let the seniors have their center.

When I called to speak to you, I was passed on to your press spokespeople, who assured me you remained firm in your determination to block the senior center.

Consider this, Henry. Your people tell me you’re 49. With a little luck, you’ll be needing one of those centers yourself in 20 years.