Dana Park Stirs Questions on Political Monuments : Legacies: Outgoing supervisor is one of many to leave name behind on public site. Practice arouses skepticism.

The sprawling nature center with the panoramic view was supposed to be the swan song of a longtime politician, a goodby gift of sorts from Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana to his constituents and a lasting monument to his 16 years of public service.

It has become one gift residents of the Palos Verdes Peninsula wish they could exchange for fruitcake. The proposed center at Deane Dana Friendship Community Regional County Park, some irate neighbors contend, is less for them than for its namesake.

“It is understandable why Deane Dana wants the building; it will be a monument to his tenure as a county supervisor,” said Jane Jones, chair of the opposition group Friends of Friendship Park. “It is incomprehensible that he wants to ruin such a beautiful place to do it. It is unbelievable that he thinks he will be thanked for it.”

Supporters of the $4.4-million project, it seems, are a breed found more readily these days in the Kenneth Hahn County Hall of Administration--itself named for a former supervisor--than on the peninsula.

“The park was already going to be built,” said Dana. “My staff members and others said, ‘You’re leaving. You should name it after you.’ Every other person who has gone out has had something named after them.”

Straddling the border between Rancho Palos Verdes and San Pedro, the 123-acre former Friendship Park is only the latest in a long line of public works sites--roads, airport terminals, subway stations and parks--named for Los Angeles politicians. And it is an unlikely ground-zero for a political squabble that will continue even after Dana steps down next year.

As public figures come under scrutiny as never before, some observers are asking whether the time-honored name game should be halted for good. If not, they wonder, what must be the legacy of a politician before he or she is immortalized in such a way?

“It’s no wonder more and more people are staying home from the polls; we’re just not sure if our leaders are working for our interests or their own,” said Princeton University sociology Professor Robert Wuthnow. The tradition, he said, “raises ever more skepticism by the public on the part of politicians.”

Xandra Kayden, a political scientist at the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, said, “With the low credibility politicians now have, [Dana Park] doesn’t appear very seemly. It strikes me as kind of lacking in taste. It’s self-aggrandizement. We used to name things after heroes, or people who die in a war. That seems to be getting lost.”

Hogwash, say others.

The tradition, proponents contend, is a proper, and inexpensive, way to honor that increasingly battered American institution, the local politician.

In the case of Deane Dana Friendship Park, the only additional expense will be to change signs and pay someone to hang the plaques Dana acquired over the years. The mementos would adorn one of the nature center’s conference rooms, as at many other buildings named for public figures.

Politicians “get paid so poorly and they take such flak . . . the recognition is deserved,” said Jay Curtis, former president of the California Taxpayers Assn., who added that public servants “right down to the dogcatcher” might be worthy of such honor.

As long as the the signs at parks and recreation centers aren’t reduced to taxpayer-funded political advertisements, said UC Berkeley political scientist Bruce Cain, there are probably “much more pressing” concerns for the modern world.

Dotted with wildflowers in the spring and golden tufts of wild grasses at this time of year, the sprawling hilltop park to be graced with Dana’s monument--the planned 6,400-square-foot nature center--offers spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean, from Santa Monica Bay to Los Angeles Harbor.

It joins dozens of other projects named for Los Angeles leaders.

From the Schabarum Trail--a 28-mile hiking and equestrian trail named for former county supervisor Pete Schabarum--to the Yvonne B. Burke Health Clinic in Santa Monica, the county is dotted with brick, steel, grass and asphalt monuments to its public servants.

Some of the projects, like the Glenn M. Anderson Freeway, named for the former congressman who pushed for its construction, and the Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, named for the former mayor who spearheaded its refurbishing, are multimillion or multibillion-dollar, high-visibility projects. Others are smaller parks and even streets that already existed and were renamed by colleagues to honor an outgoing politician or one who has passed away.

Kenneth Hahn, a 40-year county supervisor who enjoyed wide popularity with his pothole-filling populist approach before retiring in 1992, has his moniker on everything from the County Hall of Administration to a state recreation area.

The honor, Hahn said, typically--and rightfully--goes to the person most responsible for making the project happen. It is, he said, “political recognition for a job well done” and should be offered every good politician “from the President down.

“It’s very simple,” Hahn continued. “The people in office want to name something to honor the person who is leaving or dies. We’ve always named some facility for a supervisor when he leaves office.”

Hahn compared the tradition to philanthropy. When a wealthy benefactor pays for a new university building, the university often offers its thanks by naming the structure for that person.

In politics, the funds don’t come from the politician’s personal bank account, but the tussle for tax dollars can be grueling. And the victor is often deserving of reward, said former Mayor Bradley.

“The person who is being honored has to be significantly involved . . . in getting the project out,” he said. In the case of the airport terminal, “I was on top of that thing every day.”

Wuthnow contended, though, that naming the donation after the donor “begins to cheapen the altruism one hopes is part of a philanthropic gift.”

Even supporters of the practice of so honoring politicians agreed that there should be ground rules. Most important, several said, the honor should go to either one who is retired or retiring, or the honor should be given posthumously. And it should come either from colleagues or community groups, rather than the one being honored.

The renaming of the airport’s former West Terminal ran into controversy because it broke the retired or retiring rule. Nearly a decade before Bradley would step down, now-prominent defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.--then a Bradley appointee to the Airport Commission--stunned his fellow commissioners when he suddenly announced the new moniker.

In the case of Deane Dana Friendship Park, it wasn’t the name--at least in the beginning--that bothered the critics.

Plans to improve the once-farmed park grounds, owned by the county since 1960, go back as far as 1974. But no funding for a nature center was then available, said county Parks and Recreation director Rod Cooper. In 1992, voters approved Proposition A, providing $540 million for parks countywide, $4.4 million specifically for the then-Friendship Park.

The battle for funds provided by Proposition A was especially heated, and Dana’s rounding up of $4.4 million for improvements to one of Los Angeles’ most spectacular viewpoints, some say, was a coup that would have been graciously accepted in many neighborhoods.

It “sounds like the typical snobby NIMBY-ism that people in these types of communities tend to exhibit,” said longtime Democratic political consultant Hal Dash. “It’s nice to honor heroes, but they probably had less to do with getting the park. The people who push it through deserve the due.”

Indeed, many neighbors were initially receptive to improvements at their favorite hiking hill. And most of the criticism leveled at the project had less to do with Dana’s name being on it than with placement of the 6,400-square-foot nature center in the middle of the park and other specifics of the plan, including digging in areas once home to Native Americans.

But having Dana’s name attached to the project, critics charge, has left Dana and his fellow county supervisors in a sort of “you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours” position, unwilling to address their specific concerns.

“We expected that the Board of Supervisors would listen,” said Kenneth Goldman of Friends of Friendship Park, which asked for a smaller building placed on the edge of the park. But “we knew they would not vote against Deane Dana’s grandiose plan.”

The supervisors either declined to comment or did not return phone calls. Joel Belman, a spokesman for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, however, echoed the sentiments of other supervisors’ offices when he said: “We defer to the judgment of Supervisor Dana . . . to determine the recreational needs of his constituents. There was no need to second-guess the local supervisor on a local issue.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich made the motion to rename the park after Dana earlier this year. But Dana himself made the motion to approve the Environmental Impact Report at a Nov. 2 hearing--essentially giving the project final approval. It was a move that further infuriated naysayers.

“He’s going out of office next year and he needs to have his name on a building,” Al D’Amico, of the opposition group Friends of Friendship Park, said of Dana. “He already has his name on the park. He’s insensitive.”

Dana may well deserve such an honor, said some who knew of his work and some who didn’t, but in the end, critics argued, naming a facility for every outgoing politician may diminish the honor.

While remembering John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. in such a fashion may provide a sort of street-level civics lesson, said University of Southern California religion and social ethics professor Donald E. Miller, county supervisors, city council members and other local politicians may not offer a legacy that will last as long as their monuments.

“I’m honored every time I drive on Martin Luther King Boulevard,” Miller said. “I would prefer that we would designate public spaces [to people] whose name is going to live beyond the moment, and whose contribution is going to live beyond the moment.”

Allan Hoffenblum, a Los Angeles Republican political consultant, said that whether people agree or disagree with Dana’s politics, he had fulfilled the requirements for such an honor.

“I think anyone who’s able to work hard and get one’s self reelected without any taint of scandal has done a good job,” he said. “Being on the Board of Supervisors is not the most glamorous job. If they want to name a park after him, that’s fine. When they start naming them after political consultants, then we’ll know we’re in trouble.”