Riordan Appoints Attorney to Handle LAX Revenue Issue

Theodore (Ted) Stein Jr., a San Fernando Valley attorney-developer and former prosecutor, was chosen by Mayor Richard Riordan on Friday to handle the tricky job of wringing dollars out of Los Angeles International Airport to pay for more police officers.

Stein, a self-described “political junkie,” is said to relish a tough legal scrap. He has fought on both sides of development issues, but has mostly worked to make city land-use rules friendlier to business.

Perhaps most important, the 44-year-old USC graduate has emerged as a top policy adviser to the new mayor on a range of issues.

Associates say Stein, the son of a Stockton retailer, has become a favorite of Riordan by being shrewd, tough-minded and an early partisan of the multimillionaire GOP businessman’s mayoral bid. Stein lives in Encino with his wife and two daughters.

City Hall sources expect that Stein, appointed to the Airport Commission on Friday by Riordan, will soon be elected its president. He will try to make sure Riordan makes good on his campaign promise to raise money for more police by tapping into LAX revenue. The city’s Department of Airports takes in $400 million a year.

It is a task that will pit him against the airline industry, which accounts for most airport revenue through the landing fees it pays, and, perhaps, the Federal Aviation Administration, which jealously guards air traffic revenue from local government encroachment.

Airline companies have threatened to sue the city over its recent increase in landing fees and have vowed to fight city efforts to lift federal restrictions on transferring airport revenue to the city’s general fund to pay for more police.

The landing fees and federal restriction issues are critical to Riordan’s goal of making the airport more profitable and, eventually, leasing it. Riordan has said that generating new airport revenue is key to financing his plan to hire 3,000 more Los Angeles Police Department officers.

Also among Riordan’s appointees to the five-member commission is Stein’s close friend, attorney Dan Garcia, a top executive at Time-Warner. Both men did stints as president of the city’s Planning Commission.

Stein, who worked in the 1970s as deputy district attorney handling major felony cases, is known for his combativeness and is expected to confront the airlines with enthusiasm.

“Ted’s up to this kind of job,” said Bill Christopher, a land-use activist who served on the Planning Commission with Stein. “I think he’ll enjoy the challenge. After all, he’s got a background as a litigator.”

As a planning commissioner, Stein gained a reputation for bluntness.

In early 1992, he berated the acting planning director after she proposed--in an unsuccessful attempt to boost the integrity of environmental reviews of construction projects--that city planners monitor virtually all communications between developers and their private environmental consultants.

Stein and the development industry said the proposal was illogical, costly and intrusive. It was dropped.

Later, Stein, as commission president, left his stamp on the Warner Center specific plan, the guide for developing the 1,100-acre Woodland Hills retail-office complex.

Stein was sharply critical of the first proposed specific plan, backed by former Councilwoman Joy Picus and the Planning Department staff. It would have limited growth at Warner Center to 26 million square feet and made developers pay stiff fees for each new automobile trip generated by their projects.

Stein complained that the lid on development was too low and the trip fees were too high, saying the limits would discourage developers and undo the city’s goal of concentrating development at Warner Center. He also said it would further damage the area’s economy during a real estate recession. Subsequently, the fees were slashed by more than 50% and the lid on development raised to 35 million square feet.

Since 1983, Stein has owned Raider Planning & Construction, which has built residential developments across Southern California.

“Ted is slanted toward development,” said Robert Gross, a Woodland Hills homeowner activist. “But at the same time, he has responded to our concerns.”

With the Warner Center plan, Stein kept city planners focused on the need for phasing in the growth.

As a planning commissioner, Stein tried to streamline the city’s planning process to make it friendlier to developers. “We cleared away some of the roadblocks, but there’s more to be done,” Stein said recently. Despite his successes in business, one of Stein’s first loves has been politics, and he has surrounded himself with well-connected business associates.

In 1990, Stein hired Mike Gage, former deputy mayor to Tom Bradley, to run his construction company. “Ted’s in a business where you need political smarts and who better to have helping you than a former deputy mayor,” Taylor said.

In a financial disclosure statement filed last year, Stein revealed his major interests in five limited partnerships that own nearly 200 apartment units in the San Fernando Valley and a 27-unit single-family home development in Sylmar.

The statement also shows that he has several political insiders as partners, including Robert Neiman, owner of a Valley-based lumber company and husband of Suzette Neiman, who was on the Planning Commission with Stein; Johnnie Cochran, a prominent criminal lawyer and current airport commissioner, and Rosalind Wyman, a former Los Angeles city councilwoman and longtime Democratic Party activist.

Stein also owns a 50% interest in a 100,000-square-foot office complex in Chatsworth and derives income from his law practice, construction company and property management firm, according to the report.