County Drops Fight on Airport Growth Law : Development: Officials abandon bid to exempt area from legislation controlling land-use around airfields.

Buffeted by two gubernatorial vetoes in as many years, Los Angeles County officials have abandoned efforts to exempt the county from a state law aimed at controlling growth around airports.

Under current law, local planners must fashion comprehensive land-use plans to ensure that developments around airports--including Los Angeles International Airport and those in Van Nuys, Pacoima, Palmdale and Burbank--are compatible with flight safety and noise control regulations.

Giving up their fight against the law in the Legislature, county officials have scheduled a meeting today with representatives from 39 cities to begin work on developing land-use plans for property surrounding airports.

Local officials say that it is too early to tell whether the plans would effect proposals to develop acreage that Lockheed Corp. is abandoning at the Burbank Airport or on land-use around Palmdale Regional Airport in the fast-growing Antelope Valley.

Last year, former Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed a bill that would have exempted Los Angeles County from the requirement to devise such plans for all of its airports. His successor, Gov. Pete Wilson, vetoed a similar measure earlier this month.

John Huttinger, a county planner, said that in light of Wilson’s veto, “We have no choice” but to meet a Jan. 1 deadline for formulating the airport land-use plans.

Such plans have been required by the state for two decades. But as of 1990, plans had been completed for only about half the state’s 269 airports. And in Los Angeles County, none of the 17 airports were covered by plans.

So the Legislature put teeth into the law, compelling Los Angeles and other counties to come up with plans. Under the 1990 changes, if an airport does not have a plan, many construction projects--some as far as two miles from the airport--would need approval from a regional planning agency as well as local governments.

In Los Angeles County, the Regional Planning Commission was given the job, triggering complaints from cities that they should have more representation on an agency that would decide local planning disputes.

The deadline to comply with the law was initially June 30, but the Legislature extended the deadline for Los Angeles County to Jan. 1.

Taking advantage of the extra time, the county sought to win a permanent exemption.

In vetoing the latest bill by Sen. Newton Russell (R-Glendale), Wilson argued that airport land-use plans “are a useful tool in protecting the general public from the noise and safety hazards of airports, and to protect the aviation community and airports from encroachment by inappropriate land uses.

These plans allow local officials to balance competing values without direct state intervention.”

Wilson criticized Russell’s bill, saying, “Los Angeles County has already been granted one extension, but unlike other counties has made virtually no attempt to complete or adopt the plan within the required time.”

“Basically, the governor said we had to do it,” said Huttinger, assistant administrator for advanced planning in the county’s Regional Planning Department.

In pushing the bill by Russell, whose district includes the Antelope Valley, county officials had argued that airport land-use plans duplicate local general plans and strip cities of authority to oversee local development. Cities in the county were also upset that the Legislature designated the Regional Planning Commission as the airport planning agency for the county.

City officials have said the commission lacks the staff to handle the workload involved in the task and is less responsive than cities to local conditions.