Planner Rescinds Limits on Builders

With builders up in arms and one of her own commissioners fuming at her, the top Los Angeles city planner has rescinded a 9-day-old order designed to limit the influence of developers on environmental reviews of major building projects.

At a public meeting Thursday, Acting Planning Director Melanie Fallon told the city’s Planning Commission that she had retracted the policy late Wednesday because of the “considerable controversy” it had generated, and is now inviting developers to participate in shaping a substitute. The aborted policy directive was issued Dec. 31.

The policy was meant to limit the influence of developers over drafts of environmental reviews through a series of rules. One prohibited developers from meeting with their EIR consultants unless a city planner was present. Another prohibited developers from reviewing in advance or making any changes in the environmental impact reports produced by consultants they hired.

“The applicant shall neither preview nor rewrite any part of the EIR prior to city review,” the 14-page directive said.

Ron Bass, a widely recognized expert on California environmental law, said in an interview that such a rule is a simple antidote to a widespread problem in Los Angeles. Because the writers of EIRs submitted to the city for analysis are hired by developers, he said, “it’s like being asked to write stories about President Bush’s performance, but having them edited by Bush.”

But Planning Commission Vice President Ted Stein, a developer himself, complained that Fallon’s policy directive was a “vast departure” from the city’s previous manner of handling the processing of environmentally sensitive projects.

Stein sharply challenged Fallon’s authority to issue such an edict without commission approval, and warned Fallon not to issue a substitute policy until this jurisdictional question was settled.

Gary L. Morris, a lobbyist for several large commercial projects, told the commission that the building industry “is sick and this policy will make it sicker.” Lobbyists Paul Clarke and Robert Wilkinson also criticized it.

Latham & Watkins, a downtown law firm specializing in major land-use cases, sent out a “client alert” letter warning about Fallon’s directive and urging clients to contact the firm about ways to “effectively make their views known to city officials.”

Bass, the environmental law expert, said Fallon’s policy directive appeared to be in step with recommendations he had made to the city for strengthening the credibility of its environmental reviews.

Bass said his recommendations--made after he was hired as a consultant by the city--would have brought the city’s policies into line with “very common practices of other cities in California.”

There have long been questions about the credibility and quality of the city’s environmental reviews of major projects, the heaviest criticism coming from homeowner groups. They have especially protested the city’s practice of allowing developers to hire the consultants who prepare the EIR documents for their projects. This practice guarantees, its critics say, a document shaped to suit the developer-client, not the city or the public.

A widely publicized management audit of the Planning Department, released last August, also found it “quite inappropriate” that developers often met with senior Planning Department officials to lobby them about the city’s environmental reviews of their projects.

Although neither of these issues was directly addressed in her policy directive, Fallon--the city Planning Department’s acting director and one of five finalists for the permanent job--said in an interview that her short-lived policy may have been “too tough and may have been unworkable in practice.”

In her remarks to the commission, Fallon said the Planning Department will meet with concerned developers at a workshop on Jan. 22 to consider their objections and possible revisions to the policy.

In its “client alert,” Latham & Watkins said the EIR policy was unnecessary and would “actually prolong the environmental review process.” Clarke, the lobbyist, also warned the commission that the policy would increase the time and expense developers would have to devote to the EIR process.

For several years, a major complaint by developers of large-scale projects has been how long it takes the city’s Planning Department to approve EIRs.

In her cover letter to the directive, Fallon said the new policy would help ensure that the city complied with a recent state Court of Appeal decision that placed “a heavy demand for independence, thoroughness and objectivity” on local government agencies charged with conducting environmental reviews, and meet the recommendations made by Bass.

Referring to the private meetings prohibited in the directive, Bass said they posed the danger of a developer intimidating consultants into hedging their conclusions about the environmental impacts of their client’s project, Bass said.

“The developers are paying the bills,” Bass said. Compromised EIRs “can happen, and they have happened,” he said.

To ensure compliance, the city’s directive also required the consultants to sign a statement verifying that they had adhered to the policy. But Merryl Edelstein, head of the Planning Department’s environmental unit, said the statement was not to be signed under penalty of perjury.

“There were no penalties,” Edelstein said. “We were going to keep it on good faith and wait and see how that worked.”