Officials Question Timing of LAX Security Study

Two federal lawmakers are questioning whether the City Council will have all the information it needs on security issues at Los Angeles International Airport when council members vote this fall on Mayor James K. Hahn’s modernization plan.

Reps. Jane Harman (D-Venice) and Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who represent airport-area residents, are concerned that the council will have only one part of a two-phase Rand Corp. analysis by September.

In a letter to the mayor, the congresswomen wrote this week that the scope of the first report was too narrow and would not help the council adopt an LAX plan that protected against the “widest array of potential terrorist threats.”

When Hahn called for the Rand review in May, he said it would “assess the security components” of his $9-billion modernization plan in time for the City Council vote.

Council members said they hoped to use it to decide if the mayor’s plan adequately addressed security needs at LAX.

But the city’s Airport Commission adopted a two-step approach last week, giving Rand a $291,000 contract to analyze security at the existing facility.

The think tank will not study the security implications of the specific projects in Hahn’s plan until next year.

“Absent such a full-scale study, any City Council deliberations on a master plan and [environmental documents] will be made in a vacuum,” Harman wrote.

“The phased approach endorsed by the commission leaves far too many questions to be answered at a later date, long after [the environmental report] has been approved and sent to the FAA.”

Harman commissioned an initial Rand study, which was released May 14, 2003. It found that concentrating travelers at a remote facility near the San Diego Freeway could lead to more casualties if an attack occurred.

The remote check-in center was considered a centerpiece of Hahn’s plan.

In the first study, Rand will identify security weaknesses at the existing facility, including scenarios for how terrorists might attack LAX, which targets would probably appeal to them and the estimated damage should they attack those sites.

The think tank will also conduct a cost-benefit analysis on improving security at LAX.

Hahn and Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who drafted an implementation plan that postpones the most controversial elements of the mayor’s proposal, disputed Harman’s assertions, saying the first Rand study would answer the significant questions.

“The mayor is confident that the study conducted by Rand will provide ample information to the council prior to their vote,” said Elizabeth Kaltman, a Hahn spokeswoman.

In addition, Miscikowski’s implementation plan requires the city’s airport agency to conduct a security analysis of each project in Hahn’s plan before the projects are allowed to move forward, said David Kissinger, the councilwoman’s airport relations deputy.

Harman also forwarded to the mayor a legal opinion she solicited from Santa Monica-based law firm Chatten-Brown & Associates, finding that Miscikowski’s compromise plan could subject the city to litigation because it postponed projects that were essential to mitigate noise, air pollution and other effects.

For example, if Los Angeles were to defer building a remote check-in facility, as Miscikowski proposes, the city could be subject to a lawsuit that would require officials to build the center because it was considered a mitigation measure, wrote environmental attorney Jan Chatten-Brown.

But Miscikowski disagreed, saying her plan didn’t remove elements from Hahn’s proposal precisely because doing so would require the city to redo its environmental analysis.

Chatten-Brown’s opinion “really purports to say exactly what I’ve been saying all along, and that is that you can’t take out parts of the master plan and keep the environmental documents whole,” the councilwoman said.