Term Limits Will Mean Less Time to Make Names for Themselves

It’s easy to tell when a longtime Los Angeles politician is retiring: Colleagues begin to name buildings, parks and all matter of other stuff after him or her.

That has begun to happen with City Councilman Marvin Braude, who is leaving City Hall next month after 32 years in office.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky announced last week that he had persuaded the county sanitation board to name a nature preserve in the Santa Monica Mountains after Braude, who fought for years to keep the area from being used for landfills.

The City Council also voted unanimously to emblazon Braude’s name on a proposed 200,000-square-foot municipal building at the Van Nuys Civic Center to honor him for fighting to renovate the aging facility.

Braude is certainly not the first to receive such recognition.

When former Mayor Tom Bradley retired four years ago after 20 years in office, city officials named an airport terminal, a youth center, a fountain and a wing at the Central Library after him.

Last year, the council named the City Hall child-care center after former Councilwoman Joy Picus, a 16-year council veteran who championed equal pay for women and pressed for the center.

But this form of homage may be coming to a halt, because term limits now restrict politicians to only eight years in office. That may not be enough time for pols to establish themselves as tireless crusaders for the public good.

Braude recently acknowledged this, noting how long it took him to get the city to finally approve a contract to rebuild the Van Nuys Civic Center.

“This is what is wrong with term limits,” he said. “It took me 12 years to get this done.”

Last-Ditch Dirt

Political campaign pros know newspapers wrap up their preelection day coverage the weekend before voting day and usually refrain from printing attacks and counterattacks after that cutoff date.

Do political campaign pros take advantage of that to get in last-minute potshots knowing they won’t be held accountable for them?

They deny it, but it happens often enough, especially in close contests, to raise suspicion.

Case in point: the 11th Los Angeles City Council District race in which Cindy Miscikowski bested Georgia Mercer.

Much of the under-the-radar activity in that contest involved letters penned by neighborhood activists. For example, a letter from Woodland Hills homeowner leader Gordon Murley called Mercer a “has-been” who would never meet with Valley leaders if elected.

A letter sent to Pacific Palisades voters said Mercer favored repealing the leaf-blower law. (She didn’t.)

On the other side of the coin, the Miscikowski campaign accused Mercer of distributing copies of the edition of the L.A. Weekly that printed a headline and photo caption suggesting a farfetched comparison between Miscikowski’s veracity and that of ex-LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman.

Mercer’s campaign immediately repudiated the headlines as outrageous, but last weekend some areas of Brentwood were leafleted with copies of the article.

Mercer consultant Larry Levine not only denied any involvement, but said he thought the reprints hurt his candidate because the connection suggested was so defamatory.

Miscikowski consultant Rick Taylor denied taking any part in the anti-Mercer letters.

Both consultants could be telling the truth. That’s because the law allows backers of a candidate to put out campaign literature on their own.

So the campaigns have deniability. Whether they are credible denials is another matter.

Up the Creek

Long regarded by environmentalists and homeowner groups as a rubber-stamp organization for development interests, the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission has gotten a new look lately: two new women and perhaps, greater independence.

Four of the five members of the powerful commission--which determines the fate of the county’s unincorporated areas--are women, which is the most anyone can remember serving on the panel.

Esther Feldman, director of the Los Angeles field office for the Trust for Public Land--a national organization that acquires land that it transforms into parkland--was appointed last month by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

Cheryl Vargo, a Manhattan Beach parking commissioner, was selected in January. They join Planning Commissioners Sadie Clark, Patricia Russell and Don Toy.

On their plates in the near future are controversial local development proposals: the Newhall Ranch mini-city in the Santa Clarita Valley and the expansion of Universal City.

Whether the newly reconstituted commission will behave any differently from its predecessors is an open question, but the ultimate determinant is likely to be the political leanings of the men and women who appointed them.

For instance, Supervisor Mike Antonovich is generally supportive of development, and so is Russell, who is his appointee to the commission.

Nonetheless, Vargo, who was appointed by Supervisor Don Knabe and is also considered pro-development, surprised everyone a couple of months ago by asking Newhall Land & Farming Co. to remove from its Newhall Ranch plan about 2,000 homes from along the Santa Clara River to provide the waterway with a larger buffer area.

Moments before Vargo’s suggestion, her fellow commissioners and planning staffers seemed to have been moving toward approving the project with relatively few changes. And judging by their comments and general manner, some appeared to be less than pleased with their new colleague’s zeal.

Vargo will probably find sympathy on the issue, however, from Feldman, a surfer who lives atop a ridge in Malibu. She is a former director of special programs for the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and the brains behind two Proposition A county park bond measures in the past five years that have set aside a combined $859 million to acquire and develop new parkland.

More importantly, however, for watchers of the Newhall Ranch project is the fact that Feldman has also been fighting for more greenways along the Los Angeles River.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to predict that Feldman--who is out of town until the end of June--will want to ensure that Southern California’s last major wild river is protected as well.

Tale of the Tapeworm

The Board of Supervisors this week officially came out against two legislative assaults on their power as MTA board members.

The first, AB 1481, authored by Assemblyman Steven Kuykendall (R-Rancho Palos Verdes), would reduce the MTA board from 13 to nine members--and the number of county supervisors on that panel from five to three.

The Senate’s SB 567, sponsored by Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), would shrink the board from 13 to 11, and the number of supervisors from five to two.

The unusual “emergency motion”--which passed 5 to 0--was put forward by Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, but Antonovich and Yaroslavsky have been the most vocal in their opposition to the proposals.

Antonovich said he was opposed to them not only because they would reduce the supervisors’ role on the MTA board, but “because the real problem of the MTA has been, and continues to be, a dysfunctional board whose tunnel vision has led to a $350-million-per-mile subway, which like a tapeworm, has consumed the limited tax dollars needed for a comprehensive, countywide transit system.”

If nothing else, Antonovich gets points for metaphor making.

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QUOTABLE: “My supporters got angry and got out there.” Newly elected City Council member

Cindy Miscikowski, who prevailed after finishing second in the primary