An Offended Bernson Decides to Dump on Mid-Valley Chamber

When persuasion fails, try sarcasm. That’s the thinking of City Councilman Hal Bernson, who inflicted his trademark sting on the earnest boosters of the Mid-Valley Chamber of Commerce this week.

The exchange was provoked by the chamber’s endorsement of the controversial expansion of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Granada Hills--a project Bernson has long opposed.

Bernson retorted not with staid proofs, but with the faintest of sneers. In a letter to chamber President Philip “Flip” Smith, he proposed solving the landfill problem by building regional “waste-to-energy” trash-burning plants.

“Since your chamber seems to like dumps,” Bernson wrote, wrapping up, “I propose including Van Nuys as the site of the Valley plant. . . . I will assume by your board’s action Van Nuys will be a willing recipient of this plant unless I hear otherwise from you.”

As Van Nuys is the heart of the chamber’s turf, Bernson’s letter was a calculated ploy to raise the chamber’s NIMBY hackles.

In truth, Bernson wasn’t really serious about Van Nuys, his aides admitted later. But lest the proposal be dismissed as a prank, they hastened to point out that the trash-burning idea is for real; Bernson hopes to introduce a motion on it in the coming months.

Say What?

It was billed as a Day of Dialogue, an event designed to promote communication among races. But at the Reseda office of City Councilwoman Laura Chick, it was more like a Day of Miscommunication.

Chick and her staff were caught by surprise when dialogue mediators and a couple of hopeful participants showed up at her office Wednesday.

It seems no one had told the councilwoman that she was holding the West Valley discussion, which was to take place in her conference room. Where are the refreshments? the mediators asked Chick’s bewildered staff. Where is the coffee?

“We were as surprised as everyone that we were the host of the Day of Dialogue,” said Chick’s aide Eric Rose.

Illustrating the difficulty of constructive dialogue, Avis Ridley-Thomas--the organizer of the event and wife Chick’s colleague, Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas--said she had told some people from Chick’s office beforehand, but added that perhaps they weren’t the right ones.

The outlook is better for a second dialogue session, scheduled for today at 2 p.m. at Chick’s office at 19040 Vanowen St. in Reseda--to the best of everyone’s knowledge.

Demanding a Rematch

You can say one thing about Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles): He doesn’t give up easily.

Despite strong opposition from the insurance industry and a previous defeat in the Assembly, Knox is trying once again to win support for a bill to give earthquake victims more time to file insurance claims.

The bill would address one of the stickiest legacies of the Northridge quake: what to do with victims who discover damage after the 12-month deadline that most insurers impose on filing claims.

Thousands of quake victims are still battling with their insurance firms over damage they say the insurers overlooked, Knox said. Now that the 12-month deadline has passed, they cannot get the companies to pay up.

Under Knox’s bill, the 12-month deadline would be extended to begin “12 months after a reasonable insured [person] would have been aware that there was damage.”

Insurance companies say that such an open-ended deadline will increase claims and force them to hike rates for everyone.

Lawmakers heeded those warnings last May, when the Knox bill was defeated by an Assembly vote of 29 to 41.

“The insurance companies succeeded the first time simply because the Legislature was inundated with incorrect information,” Knox said.

This time, Knox said, he has met with many of his colleagues and schooled them on the truth about the bill and its impact. The Assembly is expected to hear the bill again next week.

“I sense I’m going to have much better success this year,” he said.

Going for the Kill

Speaking of persistent lawmakers, Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) was not dissuaded in his efforts to kill off redevelopment projects by a stinging defeat this week.

Cities statewide have created about 500 redevelopment projects aimed at eliminating blight by setting aside property taxes to revive run-down communities. One of the city’s largest redevelopment projects is in North Hollywood.

McClintock doesn’t just dislike redevelopment projects--he despises them, saying they divert taxpayer money to private interests without a vote of the people.

In fact, he hates redevelopment projects so much that he has devoted an entire section of his Web site to the issue.

“The more I’ve learned about them, the more impassioned I’ve become,” he said, adding that redevelopment projects have put taxpayers $40 billion in debt statewide.

On Wednesday, an Assembly committee voted 10 to 2 against a McClintock bill to ban all future redevelopment projects. But only a few hours after the defeat, he introduced a second bill requiring a majority vote of property owners before new redevelopment projects can be created.

Dead or Alive

When City Councilman Joel Wachs suggested this week that city buildings shouldn’t be named after people unless they are deceased, Councilman Nate Holden pounced, adopting a tone more common to movie westerns than City Hall.

Holden issued a stiffly worded statement calling for all elected officials, “dead or alive,” to keep their names off public buildings.

To these fighting words Holden added a last shot. Noting that the East Valley Multipurpose Center was once named after Wachs, he called Wachs “hypocritical” and tossed in this gunslinging addendum: Wachs, after all, “is not dead, yet,” Holden wrote, in case anyone had doubts.

Quote of the Week

“The subway is dead. . . . It’s time to face reality.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor and MTA board member Mike Antonovich on plans to suspend subway construction projects