Fiedler Nominated for CRA Board Over Walters’ Complaints

Bobbi Fiedler, a former San Fernando Valley lawmaker, weathered the protests of an old school board rival and was nominated Monday for the governing board of the Community Redevelopment Agency.

Objecting to Fiedler’s appointment to the powerful CRA board was Councilwoman Rita Walters, who contended that Fiedler, because of her history as a conservative Republican and opponent of school busing, is unfit to help run an agency that deals heavily with minority issues.

Fiedler’s appointment “seems just so extremely inappropriate,” Walters testified Monday during a hearing by a City Council committee reviewing Mayor Richard Riordan’s seven appointees to the CRA board.

Both Walters and Fiedler were on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education when mandatory school busing for integration was a major controversy. Fiedler served on the school board from 1977 to 1981 and as a U. S. congresswoman from 1981 to 1987.

Fiedler, a Northridge resident, also was a founder of Bustop, the Valley-based parents organization that opposed busing, while Walters, who now represents a heavily African-American constituency in South-Central Los Angeles, was one of the school board’s staunchest supporters of busing.

Serving on the agency’s governing board requires “a great deal of sensitivity” to minority communities, and “unfortunately my experience with Bobbi Fiedler is that that sensitivity is not present,” Walters told the committee.

Nevertheless, the council’s three-member Community Redevelopment and Housing Committee recommended that Fiedler be confirmed by the City Council. The council is tentatively scheduled to vote on the nominations Aug. 17.

Fiedler, responding to Walters’ attack, said she was elected to the school board with significant support from throughout the city. (School board members were elected at-large at the time.) She attended integrated schools in Santa Monica as a youth and said that as a school board member she sponsored measures to help handicapped students.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a committee member, also expressed concern that Fiedler might use her CRA post to help her husband, corporate public affairs specialist Paul Clarke, who has been involved in numerous large development projects. Clarke worked on the development of Porter Ranch and, more recently, Playa Vista on the Westside.

Clarke said he has never worked for clients on projects involving the CRA.

Meanwhile, Stanley Hirsh, a Studio City resident and downtown landlord, was confirmed by the committee for appointment to the CRA board.

Hirsh owns six buildings, leased by garment manufacturers, in the downtown redevelopment area.

Hirsh told the committee that the city attorney’s office advised him that he could serve on the board as long as he avoided direct conflicts of interest. It would be illegal for him to vote, as a CRA board member, to benefit only his own real estate holdings but not illegal for him to vote on matters that might generally benefit his property and others in a redevelopment zone, he said.

“Something would have to happen right next door to my properties for me to have a conflict,” Hirsh said.

Hirsh has been fighting to block competitors downtown from obtaining city permits to operate garment manufacturing facilities outside the traditional garment district. He said his CRA duties would not bar him from continuing such efforts.

The appointment of Fiedler and Hirsh would give the Valley its strongest voice yet on the seven-seven member redevelopment board, which oversees revitalization projects in North Hollywood, Hollywood and downtown. Currently, the board has only one Valley member, attorney Dennis Luna from Encino.