Planners Suspend Disputed Decision : Warner Center: Homeowners say the panel did not give notice of a change it made regarding the development.

Los Angeles city planning officials suspended a recent action concerning the Warner Center Specific Plan because homeowners complained that they were kept in the dark about the meeting at which the decision was made, contending that the state’s open meeting law had been violated.

“There’s an appearance problem,” said Robert Sutton, deputy director of the Planning Department and key participant in the debate at Thursday’s Planning Commission meeting that resulted in a decision to expand a review of the Warner Center development blueprint.

Half a dozen developers and their representatives spoke at Thursday’s meeting in favor of the expanded review. But no homeowners were present.

Angry homeowners tracking the Warner Center matter later said they were caught off guard by the commission action because the panel’s agenda mentioned nothing about such a discussion.

Commission consideration of the modified review occurred during the period reserved on the agenda for the “director’s report.”

In a letter Monday to commission President Bill Luddy, Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization President Robert Gross said he believed that the discussion and the direction to planning staff violated the state’s Ralph M. Brown Act and warned that his group might file a lawsuit.

Gross also urged City Atty. James K. Hahn, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and Mayor Tom Bradley, who appoints the city’s five planning commissioners, to investigate the incident.

A spokeswoman for a group that specializes in open meeting law issues said the Planning Commission discussion and action did appear to transgress the Brown Act.

“I’d say that was a clear violation,” said Renee Allison, government affairs representative for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., a statewide trade group.

The Brown Act requires public agencies to produce agendas that clearly describe the business to be discussed at future meetings and bars such agencies from discussing and acting on items that have not been listed on the agenda, except in emergencies.

Sutton said the commission has decided to discuss the expanded review again at its March 5 meeting. The decision was made in consultation with the city attorney’s office, he said.

But Sutton maintained that the commission did not break the law.

The debate, however, caused Ramona Haro, the commission’s secretary, such misgivings that on Friday she complained to her supervisor in the Planning Department. “It upset me,” Haro said. “There was no one there from the other side.”

She was not even aware herself that the Warner Center issue was going to arise at Thursday’s meeting, said Haro, who as commission secretary is responsible for helping to prepare the commission’s agendas and notifying the public of the panel’s meetings.

Opening the way for Thursday’s debate was a one-page report by Sutton on the status of the department’s preparation of a specific plan for Warner Center, presented under the “director’s report” section of the agenda.

The developers who attended the meeting thus had an opportunity to make their appeal for a modification of the environmental review plans, without opposition from homeowners. Developers said they were present because they had heard through their City Hall lobbyist that the issue would come up.

After that discussion, Sutton said he was directed by the commission to study the environmental effects of zoning Warner Center for 59 million square feet of development but actually allowing only 35 million square feet to be built.

Presently, city planners are looking at a 35-million-square-foot cap on development and zoning for an equal amount.

The enriched zoning scenario, Sutton and others have said, would create a first-come, first-served scramble for development rights that would favor those property owners who are most ready to build--although permitting no more development than the plan now being prepared by city planners.

Sutton on Monday also reiterated that he was not instructed by the commission to study the effects of allowing 59 million square feet of development to be built.