Feinstein Loses Bid for Seat on Powerful Board

By Oliver Lukacs
Staff Writer

Oct. 24 -- A contentious year-and-a-half-long battle over a coveted seat on the powerful Air Quality Management District board ended Thursday night when Councilman Mike Feinstein's unprecedented bid to unseat a City of Los Angeles official as the regional representative was defeated by one vote.

Winning with a last-minute change of a key swing vote -- which Feinstein called "dubious" -- was Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who was nominated by Mayor James Hahn to replace a recently retired Los Angeles councilman as representative of the 25 cities in western Los Angeles County.

Feinstein, who said he never expected to win, said the vote effectively “killed” any chance of restructuring representation on the board to allow a city outside Los Angeles to get a voice in creating pollution regulations for a district covering 12,000 square miles and 14 million people.

“The mayor of the largest city in the state strong armed and suckered the small cities with the lure of being seen favorably by the 800 pound gorilla into giving up their own democratic rights,” said Feinstein, who has served a two-year term as mayor of Santa Monica.

“The issue is not about me," Feinstein said. "It’s about small cities who lost their shot in getting legislation to fix a broken system. We needed a seat to remain open to convince the state legislature that there was a problem that needed fixing. The loser yesterday was not me, it was democracy.”

Councilwoman Jan Perry did not return phone calls for comment.

Until yesterday, Feinstein had successfully lobbied enough cities to block the City of Los Angeles long enough to initiate talks with state legislators about giving LA its own seat on the 12-member board, opening up a seat for one of the smaller district members. At the time of the vote no legislation had been introduced.

The board is composed of 12 members, four of which are appointed by the county supervisors in Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino counties. In addition, one board member is appointed by the governor, one by the state senate and one by the state assembly. The remaining five are appointed by the cities within the four counties, including two seats in LA County, one representing the eastern region and one the western region, which includes Santa Monica and LA.

To win a seat, a candidate must win a majority of all 25 cities and a majority of the population of all 25 cities, with the mayors or their designees casting votes for each city.

Because the City of Los Angeles has 73 percent of the district's population, it has a virtual veto and has always held the seat, according to Feinstein.

Feinstein had staved off LA in prior elections by winning the majority of city votes, but lost yesterday when Redondo -- which had supported him twice in previous elections -- suddenly switched sides in a second round of votes after a 12-9 vote in favor of LA extended the nearly two-year-old stalemate.

“On the second vote, the nine of us (who voted together) are sitting together," Feinstein said. "Then we realized one guy was missing. We find out he was taken into the back, and when he came out, he changed his vote.”

Gerard Bisignano, the Redondo Beach Councilman who cast the decisive vote, did not return phone calls for comment.

With the seat now filled until 2006, it is unlikely that things will change, Feinstein said.

“If we didn’t seize this moment now and give the reason to fix it now, all the players will have changed, and we're going to have to start all over again,” said Feinstein.

He added that the stalemate would have pushed the vote back another two months -- enough time to get legislation introduced.

“L.A. doesn’t have a record of being an 800 pound gorilla only because of its size, but also because of its a priori assumptions about how much regional representation they are entitled to, assumptions that often conflict with the assumptions of many of their neighbors in their region,” Feinstein said.