Bernardi Still Respected as Outspoken Outsider

Although no longer a fixture at City Hall, retired City Councilman Ernani Bernardi can still draw a crowd.

Despite his slight frame, the 86-year-old Van Nuys man still stands out, thanks to his booming voice and aggressive style. His hearing is bad, but he compensates by standing close during conversations.

Bernardi’s wisdom was sought Thursday by Seniors for Action, a San Fernando Valley group.

But before the politics came the jokes. Belle Palmer, the club’s president, asked whether the former big-band musician still played the saxophone.

“Pay taxes?” he said.

“You’re not able to play the sax anymore, are you?” she repeated.

Then the balding, bespectacled Bernardi deadpanned: “You ready to pay scale?”

Bernardi spotted a photographer as he was about to speak. “If I knew you were going to be here I’d of brought my tuxedo,” said Bernardi, who wore a workout jacket over a button-down shirt and gray slacks.

The former councilman spent 32 years in government service before leaving City Hall in 1993. He still keeps a close eye on politicians and local government, most recently speaking against neighborhood councils during charter reform hearings, and, as always, writing letters to the newspaper.

Bernardi said these days he tries to resist influencing his former colleagues. “They didn’t pay any attention to me when I was there. Why would they pay any attention when I’m not there?” he said, adding quickly, “No, I did all right.”

Bernardi, who represented the northeast Valley, is probably best known for his tireless criticism of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. Since the mid-1970s, Bernardi worked to keep the agency from lifting a $750-million spending cap on its Central Business District in downtown Los Angeles. The state Supreme Court last year refused to overturn a lower court ruling that kept intact the spending cap, created as the result of a consent decree worked out between the CRA and Bernardi.

Bernardi believes the redevelopment tax money should not be showered on downtown business interests at the expense of other pressing city needs.

“That isn’t the end of it,” he warned. “They’re still trying to break that decision.”

Bernardi spoke for more than an hour, continuing to champion his longtime fight against wasteful government spending. “They borrow everything and pass it on to future generations,” he said.

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Leonard Shapiro of Canoga Park said one way to get more responsive government might be for the San Fernando Valley to secede from Los Angeles.

“We could go to a city hall in Van Nuys and it’d be a hell of a lot easier than going downtown,” Shapiro said.

Secession, the idea of more politicians pressing to get attention for their respective areas, Bernardi said, seems unproductive. “You’ll have the same type of politicians run it,” he said. “I think this is a negative way of doing it.”

Bernardi said his best advice is for residents to become activists, write letters to politicians, speak up at council meetings and participate in local elections.

“You’re the people who need to start talking among yourselves,” he said. “Come election time you’ll really be informed and that’s how you make a difference.”

Irving Jacobson, 80, of Encino, said he wondered how he and others could get government to listen when someone as politically experienced as Bernardi had such a tough time of it. Later, Jacobson said he welcomed Bernardi’s guidance.

“He’s an experienced politician,” said Jacobson. “He can advise us about what one should do to make ourselves more effective. We’re still fighting. We never give up.”

Palmer said she was always impressed by Bernardi, and maybe even more so now. After all, he makes appearances these days not to win votes, but to win over minds.

“He’s always been a fighter for the people,” she said. “He was always the one to fight for the taxpayers.”