Unopposed board raised $8 million

175076 Resource 135547 120144 120144 1184423715756 1206984439942 Controlled Shady Politicians and Developer Contributions

Developers are among key contributors to re-election campaigns for local politicians.

<p>Now that the <a title="Santa Clarita Open Space" href="http://santaclaritaopenspace.com/" target="_blank">Santa Clarita Open Space Preservation District</a> has been approved by the property owners within the <a title="City of Santa Clarita" href="http://santa-clarita.com/" target="_blank">City of Santa Clarita</a>, let's take a look at how local politicians (mainly those representing Los Angeles County, but also our <a title="city of Santa Clarita" href="http://santa-clarita.com/" target="_blank">City of Santa Clarita</a> representatives) are being paid to make decisions in favor of the developers.</p><p>First of all, let's be up front about the fact that the developers are the largest contributors to the re-election campaigns for the <a title="Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors" href="http://bos.co.la.ca.us/" target="_blank">Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors</a>. According to the <a title="Los Angeles Times" href="http://latimes.com/" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a>, "It has been more than a decade since any of Los Angeles County's five supervisors faced a serious election contest, but that hasn't curbed their appetite for campaign cash."</p><p>Even after voters opted to limit campaign contributions to $1,000 per donor per election cycle, elected officials have found many ways around this. Contributions can be made by the various executives and employees of a single company, as well as their family members, without exceeding this limit. And donors can contribute to legal defense and officeholder accounts that all five <a title="Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors" href="http://bos.co.la.ca.us/" target="_blank">County Supervisors</a> keep for official business expenses as well. So, all things considered, these limits on campaign contributions have been made into a farce. The campaign limits make it harder to track where the donations are coming from, now that companies are playing the "friends and family" game, but that doesn't mean that these contributions have slowed down.</p><p>Politicians are corrupt by definition, or at least most of them are. <a title="The Devil's Dictionary" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595479406?ie=UTF8&tag=santaclarit07-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1595479406" target="_blank">The Devil's Dictionary</a> by Ambrose Bierce defines politics very eloquently:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p><strong>Politics</strong>, <em>n</em>. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.</p></blockquote><h1 dir="ltr">County Representation in the Santa Clarita Area</h1><p>Santa Clarita belongs to the 5th Supervisory District, run by Supervisor Michael Antonovich. Per his website, the area he represents is:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p>Twice the size of Rhode Island and home to nearly 2 million people in 24 cities and 66 unincorporated areas, our district includes the Antelope, Crescenta, Pomona, San Fernando, San Gabriel, and Santa Clarita Valleys.</p></blockquote><p>With such a huge and diverse territory to cover, can we really be naive enough to think that the Santa Clarita Valley and the Tejon Ranch area even enter his radar screen very often? Likely not, unless it's in the form of those fat checks from Newhall Land and Tejon Ranch Co. (see below for more on this). Or maybe he's more interested in the $20 million in excess funds scraped off of the <a title="Santa Clarita West Side" href="item/158275" target="_blank">West Side</a> last year? Hmmmm... hard to say!</p><p /><h1>Newhall Land's (Lennar's) Relationship with Los Angeles County Supervisors</h1><p>The <a title="Los Angeles Times" href="http://latimes.com/" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a> reports that Newhall Land & Farming Co. (NLF) is the largest contributor to the Los Angeles County Supervisors' campaign warchests, with $65,600 in donations reported during the last election. With the <a title="Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors" href="http://bos.co.la.ca.us/" target="_blank">L.A. County Supervisors</a> drooling over NLF's large campaign contributions, it's not likely that they'll bite the hand that feeds them and deny any projects that NLF requests.</p><p>Newhall Land & Farming's mega-development in Newhall Ranch was recently approved by the <a title="Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors" href="http://bos.co.la.ca.us/" target="_blank">L.A. County Supervisors</a>, which will add about 21,000 homes to the <a title="Santa Clarita" href="http://santa-clarita.com/" target="_blank">Santa Clarita</a> area. According to the Times, NLF's largest contributions to the L.A. County warchests were in 1999 and 2003, the years when critical votes were taken to approve of this project. Voting against this project in 2003 was Yaroslavsky, who apparently hasn't seen a dime from the NLF coffers since.</p><p>We can likely attribute the approval of the new <a title="West Creek" href="item/157581" target="_blank">West Creek</a> and <a title="West Hills" href="item/157582" target="_blank">West Hills</a> developments in Valencia to these campaign warchests as well. Although these developments are much smaller in scope than the Newhall Ranch project, these projects will be high-density developments with a large amount of townhomes and condos crammed into a relatively small space.</p><p>Is it any surprise then that Newhall Land (which is now owned by Lennar) doesn't want the land that they own in the Valencia Commerce Center area to be included in the area of Castaic that is currently being considered for annexation to the <a title="City of Santa Clarita" href="http://santa-clarita.com/" target="_blank">City of Santa Clarita</a>? They clearly get better results from the <a title="Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors" href="http://bos.co.la.ca.us/" target="_blank">Los Angeles County Supervisors</a>, having paid for their loyalty over a number of years.</p><h1>Tejon Ranch Co. Another Major Campaign Contributor</h1><p>The <a title="Los Angeles Times" href="http://latimes.com/" target="_blank">Los Angeles Times</a> also lists the Tejon Ranch Co. as one of the largest contributors to the <a title="Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors" href="http://bos.co.la.ca.us/" target="_blank">Los Angeles County Supervisors</a>, with $21,687 in contributions during the last election cycle. </p><p>The 270,000 acre (or 240 square miles) <a title="Tejon Ranch" href="http://www.tejonranch.com/" target="_blank">Tejon Ranch</a> development is at the north end of Los Angeles County and will include commercial areas as well as the residential development <a title="Centennial Village" href="http://www.centennialca.com/index.html" target="_blank">Centennial Village</a>, which is expected to include 23,000 homes. This development sits just south of the Kern County border in Los Angeles County.</p><p>The developer plans to build 1,000 homes a year in the <a title="Centennial Village" href="http://www.centennialca.com/index.html" target="_blank">Centennial Village</a> development for the next 20 years.</p><h1>Minor Players Also Receive Favors</h1><p>Although Newhall Land (Lennar) and Tejon Ranch are tops on the list of known campaign contributors, other developers have recently received the go-ahead from <a title="Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors" href="http://bos.co.la.ca.us/" target="_blank">Los Angeles County Supervisors</a> for questionable developments as well.</p><p>A prime example of this is the <a title="Park Place" href="item/171517" target="_blank">Park Place</a> development slated for the Tick Canyon area of Canyon Country. In this case, the developer (Synergy LLC) submitted plans to build 492 homes and was granted that authorization without losing even a single home site, in spite of County Staff concerns that this project was "inconsistent with the Santa Clarita Valley Area Plan". The County stated that the developer's plans were not modified because the developer insisted that it would not be profitable to build fewer homes in the area. Were any palms greased in this transaction? Hard to say, but it's certainly very likely!</p><h1>Santa Clarita's Relationship with Developers</h1><p>Although it's not clear just how much the Santa Clarita City Council has benefitted from campaign contributions, it's probably not likely that they've been compensated as much as their Los Angeles County counterparts. Much of what has been built recently in the Santa Clarita area has actually been outside the City's limits, and thus has been approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.</p><p>However, as in the case of the <a title="Old Town Newhall Revitalization Project" href="item/166793" target="_blank">Old Town Newhall Revitalization Project</a>, we can't count out Ambrose Bierce's comment on Politics regarding "The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." Clearly there's some personal financial benefit to be enjoyed by at least some of our local politicians in regards to this project, especially with Laurene Weste's land ownership in the area. </p><p>The Santa Clarita City Council's conduct in using eminent domain as a first course of action in the Old Town Newhall area is highly questionable, since normally a city would attempt to entice property owners to sell willingly over time before invoking the eminent domain threat. Yeah, I know... the City claims that eminent domain is being used as a "last resort". Tell that to the property owners who have received letters stating that eminent domain lawsuits will be filed within 30 days after the owners receive the City's "appraisals" of their properties if they haven't reached an agreement as to the sales price of their properties by that time. They aren't being ASKED to sell, they're being told that they WILL sell, and it's just a matter of what the City will pay them for their troubles.</p><h1>Open Space Preservation District and Developers</h1><p>Local blogger <a title="IHeartSCV" href="http://iheartscv.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">IHeartSCV</a> has some "Let’s-Not-Screw-This-Thing-Up Suggestions" regarding the use of the funds from the new Santa Clarita Open Space Preservation District. It seems he has some expertise in this area, since he'll be pursuing his PhD in Conservation Biology shortly.</p><p>Among his comments and suggestions are: </p><ul><li>"If we want to maximize the amount of open space in our community, then buy land that’s potentially of interest to developers. We know some areas are already "safe" from their advances, so don't protect them redundantly."</li><li>"Much P.R. is about making people feel good about doing almost nothing at all. SCV excels at this pursuit. We are the city that rewards itself with a ceremony for changing parking from parallel to slanty--seriously."</li></ul><p>The <a title="City of Santa Clarita" href="http://santa-clarita.com/" target="_blank">City of Santa Clarita</a> now has a great opportunity to follow up with this project with their sights on what's right for Santa Clarita residents as a whole, and not what fills the City Council's personal bank accounts the quickest. Will they be able to complete the task of staving off runaway development by purchasing key parcels of now-vacant land that still remains as nature intended it? Only time will tell on this, but hopefully the voters won't be disappointed!</p><p>Here's a great quote from Sterling King that I'll use to close this lengthy post:</p><p>"Common sense would tell you that if you have 2 city council members who push a measure like this who received the lion share of their campaign donations from developers, something’s weird. Developers don't donate to candidates like that to get kicked in the teeth by a measure that would try to stop their business ie. local development." </p> 9 application/xml false antonovich campaign contributions castaic centennial village development eminent domain laurene weste lennar los angeles county newhall land newhall ranch old town newhall open space park place santa clarita santa clarita city council tejon ranch west creek west hills Unopposed board raised $8 million A Los Angeles Times database looks at more than 15,000 contributions to L.A. County supervisors. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-supes13may13,0,2526137,full.story?coll=la-home-center Builder's Needs Trump Residents' Concerns for New Park Place Development in Canyon Country Los Angeles County ignores residents and planning staff recommendations in approval of Park Place project. item/171517 Santa Clarita's West Side Revenues Used to Fill County Coffers Over $20 million in surplus revenues from Santa Clarita's West Side are used elsewhere in the County. item/158275 Happenings: SCV Says "Oh, Alright!" to Open Space IHeartSCV's blog post on the Santa Clarita Open Space Preservation District. http://iheartscv.blogspot.com/2007/07/happenings-scv-says-oh-alright-to-open.html Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; SU 3.011; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; Media Center PC 3.1) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 lslocum 76.171.62.15 false true false false true 181698 false false true false false false true 135547 blog blogsite/SantaClaritaRealEstate/web