Council Foes Trade Insults

Candidates in a tight race for a key spot on the Los Angeles City Council traded insults Thursday as each attacked the other’s vision for the 2nd District.

Tony Cardenas characterized a 51-point plan offered for Los Angeles by opponent Wendy Greuel as “an extreme case of tax-and-spend,” and he released his own six-point plan--which Greuel promptly dismissed as lacking substance.

With the election for the east San Fernando Valley district seat less than two weeks away, the campaign rhetoric heated up a notch between Cardenas, a Democratic assemblyman from Panorama City, and Greuel, a DreamWorks SKG executive from Van Nuys.

Cardenas called for the opening of three council field offices in the district, instead of the one that currently exists. He also said he would make his council office “the place where constituents can go to get a status report on any complaint.”

He called for annual audits of the 2nd District office, and said he would bring in federal and state dollars to open local small-business and job opportunity centers, and would make sure Valley taxpayers get their fair share of city resources.

Also, the candidate pledged to make sure the debate over a possible vote on secession is a fair and open process. He called his plan “simple and achievable.”

Countered Julie Buckner, a Greuel campaign spokeswoman, “We don’t think it’s a plan at all. Instead, it’s a handful of political slogans in the form of a press release.”

Greuel’s plan, released last week, includes proposals to expand the police force by 1,500 officers, expand the senior lead officer program, add firefighters and traffic officers, expand the L.A.’s Best after-school program, spearhead efforts to find sites for new schools and fight to preserve open space.

“Maybe her so-called plan is an extreme case of tax-and-spend--or maybe it’s really just cynical, calculated politics as usual, where the game is about making promises you can’t keep,” Cardenas said in a statement released by his campaign.

Buckner said Cardenas lacks credibility on the issue of taxes.

“He has no standing on this issue, as someone with a history of a failure to pay taxes and a legislator at a time when the state faces a $12-billion budget deficit,” Buckner said.

She released a 1997 notice of a federal personal income tax lien against Cardenas for $12,000 that was owed, and the notice showing the lien was lifted about three months later.

Cardenas said the personal income tax lien stemmed from his involvement with a nonprofit child-care group called Escuella de la Gente that failed. As a member of the group’s board of directors, Cardenas said he agreed to pay the back taxes it owed. Cardenas said he was paying the taxes in monthly installments as part of an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service when he was surprised to find that the IRS had filed a lien.

“As soon as I found out there was a lien, I wrote a check and paid it off completely,” Cardenas said. “If they had bothered to tell me there was a lien, I would have paid it sooner.”

Cardenas spokesman Josh Pulliam said he believes Greuel, by attacking personal finances, is dodging the issue of the cost of her 51-point plan, which he said could be in the tens of millions of dollars.

Also Thursday, Greuel reported raising $299,000, including $95,000 in city matching funds, and ended the reporting period on Feb. 16 with $73,900 unspent in the bank.

Cardenas reported that his campaign has raised $228,000, including $50,000 in city matching funds, and ended the period with $57,900 unspent.

Greuel continued to win financial backing from entertainment industry figures, attorneys, environmentalists, developers and city officials who knew her from her work for then-Mayor Tom Bradley.

She received 51 contributions from the entertainment industry, including funds from Universal Studios, Paramount and the Fox Group, producers Rob Reiner and Ray Stark, and Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

Her coffers will swell further Monday when DreamWorks founders Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen sponsor their second fund-raiser for Greuel.

Cardenas’ fund-raising so far has included $50,000 from a Feb. 8 event held by Walt Disney Co. executives, including Chairman Michael Eisner. He also received contributions from Universal Studios and Paramount.

The two candidates are competing for the 2nd District seat vacated in October when Councilman Joel Wachs resigned to take a job with an art foundation in New York City. The district extends from Sunland-Tujunga to Studio City, including parts of Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood.