After Hollywood Bowl Encore, Bernson Decides to Stay Home

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson is still a fan of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. But he wants nothing more to do with tickets to the Hollywood Bowl.

It was just six months ago that the city Ethics Commission fined Bernson $1,500 for using his officeholder account to buy season tickets to that famed venue.

Although Bernson argued that the tickets were used to entertain constituents and discuss city business, the Ethics Commission ruled it a misuse of the money.

Then, last week, Bernson’s office got into more hot water over Bowl tickets, when his assistant deputy, Francine Oschin, acknowledged that free Hollywood Bowl tickets meant for poor and disabled constituents went instead to a decidedly more well-heeled audience, such as chamber of commerce members and other community leaders.

Bernson was on vacation during the latest dust-up over the tickets and just returned this week to hear all about it. And he wasn’t happy.

He is now washing his hands of Bowl tickets, saying he will no longer distribute the freebies. “It’s not worth the hassle,” the councilman said.

Getting Ready to Rumble

Former Assemblyman Richard Katz, who is planning to run for the state Senate next year, has already changed consultants, firing Parke Skelton in favor of Harvey Englander.

Katz says it isn’t really a firing, because he and Skelton hadn’t signed a contract.

Contract or no, Skelton said he had been hired--and fired--and he knows not why.

The news that he’s out took Skelton by surprise and has become a topic of conversation in political circles.

Skelton, you see, has been on a winning streak and is considered one of the hottest consultants around.

Most recently, he helped elect Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) in a tough contest with businessman Richard Sybert, and state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), who beat former Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland.

“For some reason, Katz walked away from someone whose record in the last couple of years has been extraordinarily successful,” said Valley-based consultant Larry Levine.

Katz said that despite having great respect for Skelton, he is going with Englander, who has done Valley campaigns for City Council members Laura Chick and Hal Bernson and was associated with Councilman Joel Wachs. “He’s worked the Valley before,” Katz said.

Katz said he wanted it to be known he is serious about the race and is treating it like his first run for office.

“It’s going to be a tough campaign,” Katz said. “We’re running hard and we’ll do what we have to do to win.”

Englander is known for his slash-and-burn style, but then Skelton is hardly a hearts-and-flowers kind of guy himself. Plus, Skelton has worked in the Valley too, most recently for Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), whose district represents half of the Senate district Katz is eyeing.

Katz’s announced opponent, Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon, meanwhile, has hired Sacramento-based consultant Richie Ross, who was in Los Angeles recently working on the campaign.

Gut Check

Bureaucrats in City Hall throw around so much jargon and acronyms that it has prompted Francine Oschin of Hal Bernson’s office to put together a 20-plus-page dictionary of City Hall lingo.

She almost got a new, snappy addition to her dictionary this week--except that it was inaccurate.

The acronym was proposed by the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, a group of rental-property owners who routinely chide city officials for imposing new rules and restrictions on landlords.

Recently, the association got steamed over a new anti-slumlord ordinance adopted by the council and signed into law last month by Mayor Richard Riordan.

The ordinance--called the Urgent Repair Program--gives landlords 48 hours to fix dangerous conditions on their property before the city orders the work done and sends them the bill.

In its latest newsletter, the apartment owners group attacked the program and held Bernson responsible, calling it Bernson’s Urgent Repair Program, or BURP.

The newsletter noted that Bernson was angry at the city attorney’s office for taking so long to write the ordinance that creates the program.

“He threatened to hire an outside legal firm if the city attorney kept BURP bottled up inside,” the newsletter said.

But Bernson can’t take the credit or the blame for the urgent repair program because the idea originally came from the city’s Housing Department--not from him.

Understandably, Oschin was disappointed that the acronym could not be included in her jargon dictionary.

“Someone is BURPing, but it’s not Hal,” she said.

Deriding the Rails

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, declaring plans for a subway in the Valley dead beyond North Hollywood, says the Metropolitan Transportation Authority should halt plans for subway lines to East Los Angeles and the Wilshire Corridor.

If the agency continues to throw money at those projects, Yaroslavsky said, he will go to the voters with a ballot initiative to ban the MTA from spending income from local sales taxes on a subway system.

“It’s not ‘If we can’t have it, nobody else can have it,’ ” said Yaroslavsky, who plans to unveil the basics of his proposed initiative at today’s Valley transportation summit meeting in Van Nuys.

Rather, he said, it’s “simply a fact” that subways are no longer feasible or affordable. Instead of spending the sales tax money on studies for subways that will never be built, Yaroslavsky argues, use the funds for buses or light-rail systems.

Yaroslavsky said he hasn’t worked out the details of the initiative, and research has not been done on its viability. The supervisor admits that it would be a long and difficult task to put it on the ballot and win support.

He doesn’t plan to move forward until late October, when it will be time to begin gathering signatures to include the measure in next June’s ballot.

“We’re not going to pull the trigger until we absolutely have to,” Yaroslavsky said. “I prefer not to have to go through this exercise.”

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QUOTABLE

“The San Fernando Valley has become the laboratory for every knee-jerk, shoot-from-the-hip idea that any staffer has been able to come up with.”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky on a plan to run Brazilian-style buses in the Valley.