Congresswoman Wants to Tour RTC Office : Agency: Maxine Waters tells panel overseeing the West Coast operation that she’s received many complaints about the Newport Beach center.

Rep. Maxine Waters said Monday she wants to tour the Newport Beach office of the Resolution Trust Corp. because she has received numerous complaints from her constituents about that office.

Speaking at a Los Angeles meeting of a five-member panel overseeing the RTC’s West Coast operation, the Los Angeles Democrat said the complaints center on the difficulty in negotiating with the bureaucracy at the RTC.

The federal agency is charged with managing and selling houses, office buildings, loans and other assets of failed savings and loans.

Waters said that her staff has spent a great deal of time trying to unravel the RTC’s Newport Beach bureaucracy. She wants to tour the office to see the operations firsthand.

“Our office is inundated with calls from business people who have difficulty understanding how the RTC Newport Beach office works,” Waters said. “I’d like to organize a tour of the Newport Beach office, gather up all those who have been complaining and see how they can negotiate with this environment.”

Alvin J. Felton, director of the RTC’s Newport office, said Waters and her constituents would “certainly be very welcome” to take a tour.

In addition, Waters said that she was concerned about the RTC’s ability to take advantage of any opportunities that could help local communities create low-income housing and other benefits for poorer communities.

“A lot of banks have assets that could be useful to revitalize communities,” said Peter Dreier, a member of the RTC advisory board. He suggested that the RTC use some assets from failed thrifts to set up community credit unions or loan funds.

In addition, the RTC should prepare a list of commercial properties, including hotels and nursing homes, that could be converted into low-income housing, said Dreier, who also is a political science professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles.