Suit Reveals the Politics of Planning : City Hall: Testimony by Councilwoman Joy Picus describes the hardball lobbying that went on over Warner Ridge office project.

Councilwoman Joy Picus’ controversial testimony in a bitter lawsuit filed against the city by a developer brought into sharp focus last week the emerging debate over how significant a role politics ought to play in Los Angeles’ planning process.

Her frank admissions of lobbying the Los Angeles Planning Commission for her position on the proposed Woodland Hills development that is the subject of the lawsuit have pulled back the veil on a part of land-use planning that is often acknowledged but rarely seen in such detail.

In sworn statements, Picus described how she pulled out all of the political stops, including hardball lobbying, threats and attempts to embarrass her opponents.

Normally, such revelations would get little attention. But they come as Mayor Tom Bradley and independent consultants studying the city’s planning process are charging that it is too heavily influenced by the parochial interests of anti-growth homeowners groups and moneyed developers.

In her deposition, for example, Picus said she knew that opposing the 810,000-square-foot office complex that Warner Ridge Associates wanted to build in her district would help her win reelection and that this was among the chief reasons she took that position.

In addition, she said in the deposition, she threatened to make “chopped liver” out of developer Jack Spound if he released a pre-1989 election poll that she thought would cast her in a bad light. And she described her glee in embarrassing Mayor Tom Bradley and ex-council member Robert Farrell, who opposed her over the proposed development, which prompted the $100-million lawsuit in which the deposition was filed.

She also described her successful effort to pull the rug out from under the $150-million project WRA wanted to build on a ridge formerly occupied by the house of movie mogul Harry Warner. Her pitch was unsuccessful with planning commissioners. But she later persuaded the City Council to hurry into law a change in the 21.5-acre property’s zoning to allow only homes to be built, a maneuver that the developers say was done illegally.

The developers’ $100-million lawsuit was filed last year against the city, Picus and two other council members. The suit is to go to trial in January, but the plaintiffs already have won several rulings, including one last month ordering the city to rezone the property within 30 days to allow construction of commercial buildings.

In July, in a stern speech to the Planning Department, Bradley said the members of the City Council who responded to homeowners’ anti-growth sentiments were beginning to threaten the economic health of the city. He also blamed greedy developers and self-serving politicians for haphazard growth.

The so-called Zucker Report, an independent management audit of the city’s Planning Department issued in August, concluded that pressure from the City Council often influences the workload and advice of the supposedly independent department.

“The whole process is political,” Picus said in the deposition. Moreover, she said, City Council members and the mayor often lobby planners and planning commissioners.

But urban planning experts said last week that the city’s need to deal with issues such as traffic, the location of jobs and the supply of affordable housing gets lost in the shuffle when land-use decisions are based on which special interest screams the loudest or lobbies the hardest.

In another deposition in the case, the Rev. Kirt Anderson, a former field deputy for Picus who had been assigned to the Warner Ridge project, stated that Picus’ decision was made because it was politically expedient. The decision was “made first, and then analysis was brought to try and justify the decision after the fact,” he said.

Picus was unapologetic about her statements.

“I’m elected to represent the people who live in my district and that’s what I did and that’s what the transcript shows,” she said. “I believe in the democratic process and I believe in the people who elected me.”

Bill Luddy, president of the Los Angeles Planning Commission, whose role is to analyze development proposals and make recommendations to the City Council, said: “I can’t emphasize how strongly I disagree with the notion that it’s what a council member determines is in the interest of her constituency is the best idea” for the city. “That provides some truly horrible results.”

UC Berkeley urban planning professor Allan Jacobs said that ideally, the political debate over the city’s appearance and organization should occur when the city’s general plan and zoning regulations are written.

“The politics are up front in the setting of the rules of the game for everyone to live within and that’s perfectly proper,” said Jacobs, formerly San Francisco’s planning director. “But . . . they ought to not change it every Tuesday and Thursday.”