Rent Board Is Divided on Filling Vacant Seat : Santa Monica: An attempt to name a new member is set for tonight. A stalemate may hamper board business.

The Santa Monica Rent Control Board will try again tonight to fill a vacant seat after the board members split their votes on all seven candidates nominated at a special meeting Monday night.

With the board evenly divided--Chairwoman Susan Packer Davis and board member Wayne Bauer on one side and board members Dolores Press and Eileen Lipson on the other--and neither side apparently willing to budge, a new member may not be selected until the November municipal election, when three other seats are up for election.

The seat became vacant when Julie Lopez Dad resigned Dec. 31. The City Charter requires that the five-member board appoint a replacement within 30 days of a resignation. However, the charter is silent on a procedure if the board fails to reach agreement on a candidate within the required time.

Anthony Trendacosta, the board’s general counsel, is expected to present the board with a list of options tonight if no candidate receives three votes.

It is unclear what options Trendacosta will present to the board, but one possible alternative would be to leave the seat vacant until the November election.

Davis, Bauer and Lipson are up for reelection. Dad’s seat also would be up for election even if the board appoints someone to fill it.

“It’s murky,” Davis said of the effort to fill the seat vacated by Dad. “I don’t see any hope for getting three votes for any candidate, frankly. Anyone we supported, they wouldn’t support.”

If the seat is left unfilled until November, board business could be hampered until then because of the prospect of 2-2 votes on other major issues. Dad often sided with Davis and Bauer, on what were frequently 3-2 votes.

“Policy decisions could be split right down the middle, major regulations could be split right down the middle and administrative decisions could be split right down the middle,” Bauer said. “I think the only thing we may agree on are (rent dispute) decisions.”

“I think that’s a distinct possibility,” Press said. “Although I think philosophically we are all on the same wavelength and we share the same progressive principles.”

The deadlock centers around the board’s controversial incentive housing program, which could also became the central issue in the November election.

Supporters of the program--which was adopted on a 3-2 vote in October--say it is the only viable way to stop some landlords from evicting tenants under the state Ellis Act and going out of the rental business. The program allows landlords to raise the rents significantly on some units if they set aside an equal number of units at lower rents for poor people.

Press and Lipson voted against the program. The city’s largest landlord group, Action, and the city’s largest tenant group, Santa Monica for Renters’ Rights (SMRR), also opposed the program.

Davis said she opposed the three candidates nominated by Press and Lipson because she believes none of them strongly supported the board’s recently approved incentive housing program.

“I stated publicly that I would not support anyone who wouldn’t support the incentive housing program wholeheartedly,” Davis said.

The three candidates supported by Press and Lipson were William Bradley (Brad) Jones, 34, a high school English teacher and co-chairman of SMRR; Marilyn Spivey, a 42-year-old trial attorney, and Lacy D. Goode, 61, a stock clerk with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

Neither Press nor Lipson said at Monday’s meeting why they opposed the four candidates nominated by Davis and Bauer. But in an interview Tuesday, Press said she would not support any candidate who blindly supported the program.

“I was not prepared to make a commitment to someone who did not look at it objectively,” she said.

The four candidates supported by Davis and Bauer were Anthony J. Russo, a 53-year-old retired scientist; Lisa Monk Borrino, 34, a tenants’ rights attorney; Ellen Goldin, a 37-year-old consultant and community activist, and Fred Silberberg, 29, a family law attorney.

Davis and Bauer charged that SMRR, credited with bringing rent control to Santa Monica 10 years ago by getting a slate of its candidate elected to the City Council, was behind the deadlock.

“Rather than have an incumbent in the November election who supported the program, SMRR would rather we not appoint anyone until the election,” Bauer said. “SMRR has become more interested in winning office than in getting a responsible housing program.”

SMRR officials deny the accusation.

“I don’t think it is so much a question of SMRR wanting an incumbent who supports the program, but Wayne and Susan attacking SMRR,” said Davis, the SMRR co-chairman and a candidate for the board. “Unfortunately, Mr. Bauer feels that anybody who doesn’t agree with him 100% is against low-income and affordable housing.”