City Council Balks at Complying With General Plan

The Los Angeles City Council moved one step forward and one step backward on its forced march toward court-ordered compliance with the city’s General Plan, which would require substantial reductions in the size of new commercial buildings all over town.

The council cleared the way for adopting a compliance ordinance but, as the measure came up for a vote, several members balked, making it clear that they want to give builders more time to get pending projects approved before any provisions of the General Plan become law.

The delaying strategy unfolded after Councilmen Gilbert Lindsay and Hal Bernson, both critics of the General Plan, said they will withhold their votes if a motion is made to approve the compliance ordinance.

Earlier, Lindsay had invited building industry lobbyist Richard Wirth to use the councilman’s allotted speaking time to say when he would like to see the ordinance take effect.

“We would prefer no date. We would prefer not having an ordinance. At the very least, we would prefer having another week,” Wirth said.

Before the matter could come up for a vote, two other members of the council, John Ferraro and Arthur K. Snyder, had left the chambers. With two others absent for the whole session, that left only nine members to approve a measure that required 12 votes.

Ferraro said later he had not left early in order to avoid the vote. A candidate for mayor, Ferraro said he had to keep a campaign appointment. Early in the council session, Ferraro had a long chat with building industry lobbyists Wirth and Phillip Krakover. But when asked about the conversation, Ferraro said the three were merely talking about Krakover’s Ferrari automobile.

Snyder could not be reached for comment on why he left the council session early.

The council’s failure to act on General Plan compliance, some members said, virtually ensured that at least another five weeks will pass before the plan can go into effect. That is because not enough council members are expected to be present next week to enable the measure to be passed as urgent legislation. Without an urgency designation, the law would not take effect for at least 30 days.

“The history of the council on this matter is to delay and delay and delay,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, who urged the council to adopt the compliance proposal even though he disagreed with certain aspects of it.

City officials acknowledge saying during a court hearing on the matter that they believe that the council could begin complying with the plan by mid-February. After that date passed, the City Planning Commission recommended March 7 as the date when compliance would start. The Planning and Environment Committee of the City Council rejected that recommendation.

The fight over the General Plan, which has been in existence since 1965 but widely ignored, pits the city’s most powerful real estate interests against the Hillside Federation, a militant association of Westside and San Fernando Valley homeowners’ groups.

At issue is the regulation of building on about 200,000 parcels, representing about one-fourth of the city’s land.

The federation has argued for years that in regulating commercial construction, the city should abide by the General Plan instead of relying, as it has done, on an older and more permissive zoning code. Last December, the federation sued the city, claiming that compliance with the General Plan was required by a 1979 state law.

In January, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John L. Cole ordered the city to bring zoning in conformity with the General Plan within 120 days. Cole turned down a request by the federation to prohibit the issuance of any new building permits until the zoning and the plan were made to conform.

However, the judge said he expected “a good-faith effort” on the part of the city. The city, in turn, agreed to adopt an interim compliance ordinance. It is that ordinance that the council moved toward adopting Wednesday but then failed to vote on.