Mayoral Hopefuls Keep Their Distance From LAX Expansion

At first glance, it seems too much for many politicians to resist: $12 billion worth of construction contracts that would generate thousands of new jobs--a bonanza for workers that would largely be funded by the airline industry.

But in this case, the proposal--expansion of Los Angeles International Airport--is far from a unifying topic. Indeed, among the six leading candidates for mayor of Los Angeles, four oppose the current plan. And even the two who support it do so with qualifications, a testament to the powerful community coalition arrayed against the project and to the ineffectiveness of Mayor Richard Riordan in making the case for it.

“There are not a lot of votes to be gained by saying you are for the airport,” said candidate and City Atty. James K. Hahn, who supports the LAX master plan, a mammoth proposal that would represent one of the most expensive public works projects in American history and would increase passenger trips from 67 million to 89 million by 2015.

Although labor and business groups support expansion to meet the region’s growing demand for air travel, homeowners have banded together to fight the master plan. More than a dozen grass-roots alliances have organized around the issue, and many are taking an active interest in the mayoral race.

“The airport is extremely important to us,” said Val Velasco, an attorney who lives in Playa del Rey. “For us, it is the only issue.”

The next mayor will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of LAX, and decisions made at City Hall will reverberate far beyond the boundaries of Los Angeles. Among other things, the mayor will pick the Airport Commission, which must approve a growth plan, and could use his veto and other political powers to influence the City Council.

Without expansion, airport officials argue, congestion at LAX will only worsen, which could increase pressure to expand other regional airports. Conversely, critics contend that any plan that increases air traffic at LAX will undermine efforts to have those facilities pick up more of the load.

The intensely opposed camps in the debate divide a field of candidates who often find themselves in agreement on important city issues. In this case, Hahn and businessman Steve Soboroff both support airport expansion--though with qualifications. The rest of the four major candidates for mayor oppose the project as drafted.

Their reluctance to endorse the huge project reflects in part the determination of the community opponents. Velasco and other members of the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion are trying to mobilize 10,000 residents who live near the airport to vote for the candidate with the strongest anti-airport position. The group is in the process of interviewing the candidates.

With experts predicting that it could take just 100,000 votes, or a little more, in the April 10 election to win a spot in an almost-certain two-candidate runoff, there is universal agreement that every vote counts and blocs of votes count even more.

An object lesson on the potency of the airport issue was delivered in November when Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills) narrowly defeated incumbent Steve Kuykendall. Many observers believed that her strong opposition to airport growth may have given her the edge in a district that includes the airport and surrounding communities.

Regional Implications

The vanguard of the LAX opposition are the airport’s immediate neighbors--and the city’s Westchester and Playa del Rey neighborhoods--who must bear the brunt of traffic, noise and air pollution problems that would accompany airport expansion.

But neighborhoods from the Westside to the San Fernando Valley are also tuned in to the debate. That’s because the LAX plan would push commuter and corporate aircraft out to other facilities, creating fears that airports in Santa Monica, Burbank and Van Nuys would pick up more flights.

“We are plagued by noise from the Burbank Airport, which is owned by Burbank, and the Van Nuys Airport, which is owned by the city of Los Angeles,” said attorney Richard Close, a longtime activist with the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

He said Valley residents are torn on the issue of LAX expansion.

“We realize that restrictions on flights at LAX might result in an increase in flights at Burbank and Van Nuys, which would raise noise and safety issues in the Valley,” Close said. “On the other hand, already being subjected to the noise, we understand the problem of people who live under the flight path at LAX.”

Soboroff, a commercial real estate broker running with the support of Riordan, said he wants mitigation measures, such as improvements in highways and roads leading to the airport, to be undertaken before the modernization measures, such as a new passenger terminal and gates for aircraft.

That runs counter to the 15-year timetable laid out by the airport.

Hahn, who as city attorney has represented the city in lawsuits related to LAX, is similarly focused on the mitigation measure intended to lessen noise and air pollution, though he stresses that the problems at the airport today will only get worse without some version of the master plan being adopted.

City Councilman Joel Wachs, former Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa, state Controller Kathleen Connell and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) all object to the master plan with varying degrees of intensity.

They argue that the city has failed to be forceful enough in pressuring other Southern California communities--such as Ontario and the Orange County cities surrounding the El Toro Marine base--to expand their airport services. They also complain that the city has been lax in developing the city-owned Palmdale Airport, which lost its last scheduled commercial air service several years ago.

“If we can go to the moon, we can go to Palmdale,” Wachs likes to say.

All that means trouble for Riordan and his allies at the airport.

City officials spent more than six years--and $60 million--drafting the plan, which is designed to guide the airport’s growth over the next 15 years. Priced at $12 billion, the plan calls for lengthening and reconfiguring runways, construction of a new terminal, creation of a ring road circling the airport and extension of the Metro Rail Green Line to the airport, along with numerous other changes.

When the new mayor takes office July 1, the airport proposal will be one of the first orders of business.

The plan, released last month and totaling 12,000 pages, including supporting environmental data, is in its 180-day public review phase, which concludes in July. Next, it would go to the Airport Commission, which could kill, alter or approve the plan and send it to the City Council.

The plan favored by the mayor and airport staff, referred to as Alternative C at mayoral forums, is so complex and hinges on so many variables that candidates for mayor appear much more comfortable talking about reforming the Los Angeles Police Department or improving city schools. The candidates also seem well aware, as Hahn indicated, that supporting LAX growth isn’t going to win many votes.

Riordan said the candidates’ coolness to the plan may have practical as well as political roots.

He said it is “a gigantic plan” that requires time to study. At the same time, he said the candidates might be worried about stirring up opponents.

“When you are running for office, you don’t want to have any one group angry with you,” the mayor said.

But Riordan’s own difficulties have contributed to the fact that the airport is an issue at all in the campaign. The mayor once promised to have concrete poured on the LAX expansion before he left office. When it became obvious that the city would not meet that deadline, he pledged to win approvals for the project before concluding his term. Now it is clear that Riordan will leave the mayor’s job with the LAX issue still very much in play.

Proposal Called Seriously Flawed

Connell, who is counting on support from the Westside, contends that the plan has serious flaws.

“What I think you do with the LAX plan is use it as simply a starting point for conversation,” she said. “It is clearly too bloated. Option C does not work.”

Connell said she supports building the loop road around the airport and a proposed Metro Rail link to downtown but is opposed to anything that would increase passenger trips and add to traffic on the Westside.

“You don’t need to expand any passenger traffic at LAX,” she said. “I think that is a big mistake.”

The candidates, even Hahn and Soboroff, agree that the city should be doing more to explore “a regional approach” that would share the benefits--and the problems--of airport growth with other facilities in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Riordan and other city officials concur. But they argue that traffic congestion and flight delays already plague the airport, requiring that something be done now. Regional airports offer little promise of immediate relief because several, such as Burbank, Long Beach and John Wayne, face legal or political constraints on expansion. Others are so remote that it could be decades before they are developed.

“We are using an airport built for 40 million passengers, and we are now over 67 million, so we have some catching up to do,” said John J. Agoglia, president of the Airport Commission. “Everyone realizes that even without a master plan, the planes will come. This isn’t like the ‘Field of Dreams,’ where if you build it they will come. Here, if you don’t build it, they will come anyway.”

Most candidates say that they recognize the pressure to expand the airport but that they aren’t ready to commit to a proposal until a regional plan is in place.

“I agree that something has to be done,” Becerra said. “I am just not prepared to say that we are ripe to do what [airport officials] say is the best solution. We have to have a regional approach. Option C is not a regional approach.”

The clash of competing economic and environmental issues is putting some of the candidates in the hot seat--and complicating the prospects of winning approval for the project.

Villaraigosa, the former Assembly speaker, recently received the endorsement of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, which supports airport expansion because of the jobs it would create. There were splits within the labor organization, with Hahn receiving strong support from some union members.

On the campaign trail, Villaraigosa raises objections about the LAX plan: “I don’t support this plan, because I don’t think it takes into account the opportunities we have to expand air traffic throughout the region.”

He vows to use the mayor’s office as “a bully pulpit” to persuade Orange County to build a regional airport on the site of the El Toro Marine base.

At the same time, Villaraigosa describes LAX as “an important economic asset that needs to be continually invested in.”

That message was enough for the AFL-CIO.

“He has been very forthright on his position on airport expansion,” said Martin Ludlow, the union’s political director. “He knows if LAX can’t play a major aviation role in the future, we will lose jobs, revenues, tourism and be hurt in a whole host of other areas. . . . But Villaraigosa has made it clear [that] if elected mayor, he is going to use that bully pulpit for a smart regional plan. We can’t just focus on LAX.”

Key Hahn Supporter Opposes Project

Hahn’s mayoral campaign is getting support from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), a highly vocal critic of LAX and expansion that would create additional noise and air pollution problems in her district east of the airport.

Waters, Hahn said, is “not a fan of the airport right now.”

“We’ve talked about it. I am interested in figuring out a way of focusing on the problems that Congresswoman Waters is talking about--the noise, the pollution,” he said. “She’s a formidable foe on many issues. I hope I can work with her to come up with something that will be a win-win solution.”

Riordan, who will soon move to the sidelines, said he thinks the plan will succeed.

“The city of Los Angeles will fail in the future if we don’t expand the capacity” of LAX and other city-owned airports in Ontario and Palmdale, Riordan said. “If the airport is not expanded, you are going to have gridlock every day of the year.”

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Assessing the Airport

Here are the positions of the six leading mayoral candidates on the plan to expand Los Angeles International Airport.

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Rep. Xavier Becerra

Believes the plan needs more work. Questions the city’s track record in dealing with major projects and problems, citing the Rampart police scandal and Belmont Learning Complex fiasco. Says there is no question about the need to expand air passenger and cargo service, just a question of where and when. Maintains that more can be done to provide incentives to airlines to use other airports.

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State Controller Kathleen Connell

Says the airport plan doesn’t work and doesn’t do enough to address street traffic in surrounding neighborhoods. Strongly opposes anything that would increase traffic on San Diego Freeway. Would encourage shift of cargo jets to Palmdale to reduce pressure on LAX. Says rail links should be made between LAX, Palmdale and Ontario so passengers have more choice.

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City Atty. James K. Hahn

Supports plan to bring airport capacity up to 89 million annual passengers by 2015. Chief priority would be to develop plan to mitigate noise and air pollution problems accompanying growth. Says that without improvements, noise and traffic will only worsen. Believes record as city attorney handling airport lawsuits will be valuable in finding compromise.

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Businessman Steven L. Soboroff

Favors the plan, citing need to keep city growing, but support is conditioned on dealing first with traffic, noise and other environemntal problems. Fears city will make airport improvements, then run out of money before fixing feeder roads and freeway interchanges. Would like to see a cap on passenger trips at LAX. Plans to push hard to build airport at El Toro Marine base to relieve LAX.

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Former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa

Says he can’t support plan as it is and that measures to mitigate traffic, noise and air pollution must come before construction of new terminal or runways. Says air traffic should be expanded at LAX only in conjunction with other airports in region. Believes more can be done to relieve airport congestion by encouraging park- and-ride programs. Favors Metro Rail link to the airport.

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City Councilman Joel Wachs

Opposes plan because of effect of increased noise and traffic on surrounding communities. Says customer service at LAX needs improvement. Believes airports in Palmdale, Ontario and Orange County should meet the air traffic demands of their regions. Favors development of high-speed rail line between L.A. and San Francisco as alternative to air travel.