Ethics Panel Urged to Probe Bradley Role in Project : Development: Homeowners group seeks inquiry into whether mayor was influenced to push plans for a golf course by developer’s campaign contributions. Bradley spokesman denies any wrongdoing.

The city of Los Angeles’ Ethics Commission has been urged to investigate whether Mayor Tom Bradley was improperly influenced by the $30,000 in campaign contributions he got from a foreign developer who wants to build a private golf club in Big Tujunga Wash in the San Fernando Valley.

Bradley’s office repeatedly signaled senior city planners behind the scenes that it viewed as a priority their completion of an environmental review of the golf course project, The Times reported last month.

It also was determined that the city’s environmental review has taken several unusual shortcuts. In a statement, Bradley’s office has denied that he tried to influence city planners.

The golf club is proposed for a 350-acre site that is home to an endangered plant species and is officially recognized as one of a handful of sites in the city that are “ecologically important.”

The Sunland-Tujunga Assn. of Residents, a homeowners group that represents the community in which the golf course project is planned, is asking for the ethics probe.

In a recent letter, the group’s chairman, Sylvia Gross, urged Benjamin Bycel, the Ethics Commission’s executive director, to investigate whether Bradley acted improperly by accepting campaign contributions from the developer, Cosmo World Corp., as he prodded city planners to hasten their review of the project.

Bycel refused to comment on the group’s request. His policy is neither to confirm nor deny whether an investigation will be initiated, Bycel said. Although lawmakers are not barred from using their offices to support the business activities of their campaign contributors, it is illegal for them to accept such contributions as the quid pro quo for such help.

Cosmo World Corp. is a California firm wholly owned by Japanese businessman Minoru Isutani, who once owned the famous Pebble Beach golf courses. Recent financial problems have forced Isutani to sell his Pebble Beach properties.

“If the mayor hadn’t taken the damned contributions from Cosmo, it wouldn’t look so bad,” Gross said in an interview. “But it looks rotten with the money.”

Gross said the Sunland-Tujunga Assn. of Residents board voted 8 to 0 to seek the investigation of Bradley.

Bill Chandler, Bradley’s spokesman, said the mayor denies any wrongdoing in his handling of the golf course project and would cooperate with any Ethics Commission inquiry.

Meanwhile, Jill Swift, a veteran environmentalist and former Bradley appointee to the Recreation and Parks Commission, said she will urge the Los Angeles-area Sierra Club chapter to join Gross in demanding an investigation.

Swift said the Sierra Club has adopted a resolution supporting the protection of Big Tujunga Wash from development.

Cosmo World began making contributions to Bradley in 1988 and has donated more than $30,000 to his campaign coffers.

In 1988, the city’s Planning Department decided to require that an environmental impact report be done of the Cosmo World project.

City planners released for public perusal one key environmental analysis of the Cosmo World project without checking the document for objectivity, The Times learned.

City staff members later complained that the document was promotional and that it misled the public--notably by contending that the golf course project would benefit the slender-horned spineflower.

The $40-million golf club project is proposed for a rugged, desert-like site in the northeast San Fernando Valley that is home to the spineflower, a tiny plant that is recognized by federal and state authorities as endangered.