Corporations Cash In on Community Donations

Over the last few years, landfill operator Browning-Ferris Industries has just about doubled the amount of money it spends to support business groups and community projects in the San Fernando Valley.

The aim, officials said, is not to shore up corporate support for a controversial plan to expand the Sunshine Canyon Landfill. Rather, the company says, it just wants to be a good corporate citizen, the same as other companies with major operations in the Valley, including the Southern California Gas Co., GTE and the Los Angeles Times.

The money BFI is spending within the community doesn’t show up in Los Angeles city Ethics Commission filings or lobbying statements. Those already show that BFI was No. 2 in payments to City Hall lobbyists in 1999, spending $450,334.

But the money it is spending in the community demonstrates how much the company is willing to spend to boost its image, some say.

“They’re trying to spread the money around, to make themselves appear to be the good guys,” said Ross Hopkins, former chairman of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley. Hopkins makes no secret of his opposition to the landfill expansion--in contrast with the United Chambers, which he said voted more than a year ago to back BFI’s proposal.

Clearly, making corporate contributions to business organizations and local charities is nothing new. Corporate cash does everything from fund YMCA swimming pools to bankroll banquets for the local chamber of commerce.

It’s how business is done, and without those contributions, some of the Valley’s leading business organizations would not have experienced the kind of growth that they have in stature and standing.

It’s also a tool some good corporate citizens can use effectively when they run up against an angry group of noncorporate citizens.

And although to some it may seem like inside baseball, it’s a game the general public rarely gets a chance to see, let alone play.

But the money is there. It’s beautifying parks and funding souvenir books, and it’s also helping to win friends and influence people.

“If they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts . . . if they’re becoming better corporate citizens, I think that’s great,” said Walter Prince of the Northridge Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the landfill expansion. “But they’re also getting a secondary benefit and that’s maybe silencing some critics.”

Sandy Miller-Goldman, BFI’s point person for community outreach, bristles at the suggestion that her company’s largess may have influenced anyone’s opinion about the project, or that gaining influence was the ultimate intent.

“That’s what they hired me for, was to go out into the community and be a good corporate citizen,” said Miller-Goldman, who joined BFI in 1995 and immediately began a campaign to boost the company’s participation in the local business establishment.

Under Miller-Goldman’s guidance, BFI’s financial contribution to the business and local community has about doubled, according to James Aidukas, who formerly served as BFI’s director of environmental affairs and now works as a consultant hired to complete the expansion.

Between October 1998 and last month, BFI paid or donated nearly $200,000 to community events, charitable activities and business groups, according to figures provided to The Times.

About a quarter of that, $47,318, went to local chambers and business organizations, including the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. and the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley.

The largest single chamber donation, nearly $9,000, went to the Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce, which BFI lists among its supporters. It got 52% of the total outlay to chambers ($17,073).

In addition, BFI gave $17,745 to VICA, including $7,500 for that group’s annual business forecast conference. (The Times was “grand sponsor” of that event, contributing $10,000, according to a VICA official.)

The VICA board voted in 1995 to support the landfill expansion and has not taken up the matter again, a VICA spokeswoman said.

Rather than money, Miller-Goldman attributes her success in persuading business groups to support Sunshine Canyon to her hands-on, personal approach and giving people an up-close look at the lot.

“I saw early on that the way to get support was to bring them up here,” said Miller-Goldman. “People’s vision of a landfill is a big hole with garbage in it.

“Participation in the community and bringing people up here to see for themselves was really the way I did it,” she said.

Supporting the various organizations, she and Aidukas insist, merely gave them access.

“If you’re not part of the business community, you don’t have the ear of the business community,” she said.

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So what does the Valley’s business community think about the planned expansion?

When I queried several business leaders last week, there was much hemming and hawing and asking me to wait on hold. Some declined to talk at all.

“Can you see why they dance around this?” asked one.

In many ways, business now finds itself in an awkward position. As a practical matter, business tends to support business, especially in a close-knit community like the Valley.

“It’s a mutual benefit society,” said Bonny L. Herman, longtime president of VICA. “Everybody scratches each other’s back and helps each other. It’s not a quid pro quo.”

In 1995, after a tour of the landfill, a BFI-sponsored barbecue and a formal presentation, the VICA board voted to support the expansion.

Herman said the board felt there was no other “financially viable alternative.” Other business leaders I talked with agreed, citing the possible increase in trash disposal fees if the refuse had to be hauled to a more distant site.

But Herman acknowledged that the board did not hear a presentation from expansion opponents. Were the VICA board to review its position (so far no one’s asked) it would likely bring in representatives of businesses in the area and the staff of Councilman Hal Bernson, one of the most outspoken opponents, Herman said.

One of the business groups mentioned most often as being supportive of the expansion is, surprisingly enough, the Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce, which had a long-standing opposition to the landfill but appeared to reverse itself in 1997.

Now, some board members say the group’s position has been misunderstood.

“The Chamber of Commerce has always been opposed to the expansion of the landfill,” said David Cash, who’s been on the board for about five years and was president in 1997 when the matter came up. “We’re still actually opposed to having the landfill open.”

Cash said that, at that time, the board did not want to see the landfill expand into undisturbed land in the county portion of the operation. That and other factors convinced the board that expanding into Granada Hills was the lesser of two evils.

Since then, Cash said, there’s been a “misconception” that the chamber gave the expansion its wholehearted support.

Why didn’t they take up the matter again, to clarify?

“We’ve learned a lesson,” he said. “With certain situations, you’ve got to watch what you get into. It’s a bizarre situation. It’s easy to turn around anything you say.”

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Valley@Work runs each Tuesday. Karen Robinson-Jacobs can be reached at Karen.Robinson@latimes.com.