Congress Panel OKs $13 Million to Buy Parkland : Santa Monica Mountains: It would be the largest amount in eight years. Aggressive lobbying is credited as one reason for the high level of funding.

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is expected to get $13.8 million for land purchases in fiscal 1992, the most in eight years, under a budget plan approved by a congressional conference committee.

The $13.8 million--approved by negotiators from the House and Senate appropriations committees--is more than one-sixth of the $81.8 million earmarked for expansion of the national park system during the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

“It’s marvelous,” David Gackenbach, superintendent of the national recreation area, said Friday. “It shows wonderful support from Congress for us.”

“I’m delighted,” said Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles), who had sought $30 million for the mountain park. “It’s the best they could have done for us and I’m grateful to them . . . for the support they usually give us.”

If approved, as expected, by the full House and Senate, the funding would be the most since 1984 when $15 million was provided for the Santa Monica Mountains recreation area, which is a unit of the national park system. Since then, the park’s land-acquisition budget has ranged from $1 million to $12 million annually.

The House had sought $14 million for the Santa Monica Mountains, while the Senate Appropriations Committee included $7.5 million for the park in its version of the interior appropriations bill. Conferees, seeking to harmonize the spending plans, concluded their work this week.

The Santa Monica Mountains park traditionally receives a disproportionate share of land acquisition funds--due both to its status as an uncompleted park and to aggressive lobbying by the large congressional delegation from the Los Angeles area.

Park officials said that much of the $13.8 million is likely to be applied toward one or more of a series of big-ticket acquisitions, including Bob Hope’s mountain holdings, the Soka University campus site in Calabasas and the Paramount Ranch property in Agoura.

Under one possible scenario, $10 million would be used in a joint state and federal effort to acquire more than 7,300 acres of Hope’s mountain property, including the 2,300-acre Jordan Ranch in eastern Ventura County.

State and Ventura County officials and two development firms said this week that they had agreed, in concept, on a plan to transfer Hope’s lands to state and federal parks agencies in return for $29.5 million and approval of a major development on the Ahmanson Ranch. Hope has yet to approve the deal.

Gackenbach said the National Park Service would first transfer $10 million to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in return for the conservancy’s Fryman Canyon, Wilacre Park and Deer Creek Canyon holdings.

The conservancy----a state agency that acts jointly with the Park Service on land purchases--would use the $10 million as the first installment of payments to Hope.

The remaining $3.8 million might be spent acquiring lands along the Backbone Trail and in Zuma and Trancas canyons, Gackenbach said.

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a 155,000-acre mosaic of federal, state and county parks and beaches interspersed with private lands and extending from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County.

Federal holdings total about 17,000 acres, about half the goal of 35,000 acres.

SOKA HEARINGS: B10