Washed It!

A small city that used Los Angeles County tax dollars to buy a verdant stretch of the Whittier Hills to keep it out of the hands of oil companies now wants to profit from a plan to pump at least 1,000 barrels of crude a day on the same property.

And it has a formidable competitor eyeing a share of the royalties, which could range from $7 million to nearly $70 million a year.

The dispute between Whittier and Los Angeles County hinges on whether the city has a right to allow development on the 1,280 acres of hill country it purchased in 1994 with $17 million of Proposition A funds, which were intended for conservation purposes. Until now, the 21,000 acres of open space and parklands created countywide with Proposition A funds had never hosted a business larger than a taco stand or boat concession.

The average L.A. County homeowner pays about $18.50 a year to a property “benefit assessment” district designed to raise money to expand, renovate and maintain parks and open space from Long Beach to Lancaster. It also funds inner-city recreation programs meant to keep young people away from gangs.

Facing the release Thursday of a final environmental impact report on the drilling project, Whittier is eager to settle the controversy.

“We are not here to simply benefit the county; that is not going to happen,” said Whittier City Councilman Bob Henderson, who led the fight to preserve the land in the early 1990s. “If the county is unwilling to work with us toward a win-win compromise, then, as far as I’m concerned, there will be no drilling at all.”

So far, no such compromise is imminent. “Whittier wants to look as though it has presumptive rights to this royalty money, but the confidence expressed by Whittier in this matter is the city’s alone,” said Ilona Volkmann, administrator of the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, which administers Proposition A funds. “Whittier can go ahead with this oil deal, but proceeds from disposal of the property must be returned to the county.”

When Whittier acquired the land from Chevron and Unocal oil companies, it also obtained the mineral rights. “We just wanted to make sure the oil companies couldn’t someday decide to renew oil drilling there,” Henderson said of the transaction.

That was back when oil was selling for about $12 a barrel. In 2008, a year when oil prices soared past $100 a barrel, the City Council had a change of heart. It voted unanimously to lease the property for 30 years to Matrix Oil Co. of Santa Barbara.

“Times change, and the oil industry uses different, less destructive technologies than it did 15 years ago,” Henderson said. “Beyond that, the oil is worth from $600 million to $1 billion. It would be foolish to just let it sit there.”

Under terms of the lease, Matrix would use slant-drilling technologies to tap an estimated 20 million barrels of recoverable oil. Whittier, a city of about 90,000, would receive royalties amounting to 30% of the annual gross revenue from the wells.

The prospect of a revenue stream that is not tax-based has attracted the attention of Los Angeles County, which claims it has legal rights to any royalties generated by the venture. Meanwhile, conservationists contend that neither the city nor the county is authorized to industrialize open space purchased with Proposition A funds.

“The city opened a Pandora’s box when it broke the compact it made with the people whose taxes were used to buy and preserve that land,” said Daniel Duran, president of Whittier Hills Oil Watch, a group opposed to the project.

Whittier is paying $15,000 a month for a weighty ally to represent its interests: Proposition A author Esther Feldman. She now believes drilling in a nature preserve does not undermine her proposition. “I believe that this proposal to extract oil and gas from 1% of the preserve can be done in a modern fashion that maintains the integrity of the proposition,” she said.

So Whittier is moving ahead, “based on the interpretations of the author of Prop. A and several attorneys,” Henderson said.

“If Matrix can drill without causing ecological damage and at the same time make money for the city of Whittier — that’s very attractive,” he said. “Matrix is looking at producing 1,000 barrels a day…. That’s huge money. With it we can do a lot of productive things to restore habitat…. But the project only makes sense if the city of Whittier benefits from it.”

After all, Henderson added: “We own the mineral rights.”

Whittier resident Eddie Diaz, a spokesman for Open Space Legal Defense Fund, a local group opposed to the project, predicted that the dispute would land in court.

“This is not a municipal affair and the city cannot use this land at its whim,” said Diaz, a deputy city attorney for Riverside. Whittier may hold title to the park, he said, “but it holds that title in trust for the residents of the county and to fulfill the mission of the state’s open space policy.”

The Matrix project would include as many as 52 wells, pipelines and truck-loading facilities on land that had been set aside for sensitive species. Most drilling and pumping equipment would be placed in soundproof underground vaults, some of them less than 1,000 feet from homes and an elementary school for children with special needs.

“Our goal,” said Matrix Vice President Mike McCaskey, “is to return the field to its level of production in 1991 — about 1,000 barrels a day — which could be achieved with a handful of wells. But if we are wildly successful, and the price of oil stays higher, we could see numbers as high as $70 million per year for the city.”

Duran, who lives just a few yards away from the project site, dismissed that kind of talk as “an attempt to cloud the real issues with grandiose economic projections.”

“They are shooting hypothetical wads of money into peoples’ minds,” he said, “to overwhelm common sense and bury our concerns about impacts on quality of life, the environment and our recovering wilderness.”

louis.sahagun@latimes.com
Whittier hopes to profit from oil from land preserved with taxpayer funds

An 8-year-old girl, kidnapped from her yard by a stranger — the object of an intensive overnight search — was returned to her mother alive Tuesday after a dramatic rescue by a quick-acting unemployed construction worker.

“It’s truly a miracle of God that she is with us…we certainly beat the odds,” said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer.

The third-grader and a 6-year-old friend were playing in the driveway in front of their apartment complex about 8:30 Monday evening, when a man, whom police later identified as 24-year-old Gregorio Gonzalez, told them he would buy them gifts if they came with him.

Neighbors who saw the man talking to the children shouted at the girls to run. Gonzalez allegedly grabbed the 8-year-old and forced her into an older rust-colored Chevrolet pickup truck with white stripes.

The girl’s mother and a neighbor, Enrique Miguel, followed in his car.

“I saw that same truck around here for days,” Miguel said. “We chased and chased but lost him.”

Authorities issued an Amber Alert, which quickly escalated to a statewide bulletin about a small girl last seen wearing a purple “Winnie the Pooh” sweatshirt. About 130 officers were put on the case, and helicopters scanned the city. Alerts flashed on freeway signs and appeared during television shows.

Everyone working through the night knew the clock was ticking. Dyer would later point out in a news conference that most kidnapping victims are killed within the first 24 hours.

Just down the street from where the girl was kidnapped, Victor Perez was discussing the story with his neighbor.

“He was saying, ‘Man, what could we have done different to keep that from happening?’ I was saying, ‘We’ve just got to keep a lookout for that truck.’ “

On Tuesday morning, the first thing Perez did was turn on the TV to see if there was anything new in the case. Police had released surveillance camera footage of the truck. As Perez and his cousin Flor Urias watched the grainy black-and-white images, Urias looked out their living room window and saw an old rust-colored pickup with stripes making a U-turn in front of their house.

“I was saying, ‘Victor, that sure looks like that truck. Is that the truck? That is the truck,’ ” Urias said.

But Perez was already out the door giving chase in his 1988 Ford pickup, which he always backs into his driveway so he can leave quickly if he needs to.

The first time he caught up to Gonzalez, Perez waved and rolled down his window as though asking for directions.

“I told him, ‘Hey man, let me ask you something.’ He said he couldn’t talk, his battery was about to die. I said ‘I have [jumper] cables.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Maybe it’s not him, he seems like a friendly guy.’ Then while we were still talking he sped away.”

Perez caught up and forced Gonzalez to the side of the road. Gonzalez threw his hands over his head in anger.

He had been holding the little girl down. When his hands shot up, her head popped up over the dashboard and Perez saw her.

“I made eye contact with her. And that’s when I wasn’t scared anymore,” Perez said. “I won’t kid you, until then I’d thought ‘Does this guy have a gun?’ But once I met her eyes, I just thought ‘I’ve got to get that little girl out of there.’ “

Gonzalez sped off, at one point driving on the sidewalk.

Perez kept trying to force Gonzalez to the side of the road, finally pulling his truck directly in Gonzalez’s path. His plan was to rush the driver’s door. But Gonzalez pushed the girl out the passenger-side door and fled.

The girl’s first words to Perez were, “I’m scared.”

“I said “You’re OK now.’ Oh, man, she was shaking so bad. She kept saying ‘Am I going to be OK?’ and I kept saying ‘You’re OK now.’ “

Police say the girl told them Gonzalez took her to a wooded area near a canal where he sexually assaulted her and at one point threatened to “physically harm” her if she did not get back in the truck. Seven witnesses identified Gonzalez. Some witnessed the kidnapping; others witnessed an incident earlier Monday when he allegedly exposed himself to two young girls and then got away in the same truck.

Gonzalez, who lives with his grandparents, had previously been arrested on charges of possession of a sawed-off shotgun and domestic violence. He was on felony probation. About 40 minutes after he pushed the girl out of his truck, he was spotted in central Fresno by California Highway Patrol Officer Dustin Dimmer and taken into custody.

As Perez was chasing Gonzalez, her mother was home after a night at the police station, sobbing uncontrollably. Miguel, the neighbor who had helped her chase the kidnapper, could hear her through the thin walls.

Then, through the walls, he heard a phone ring. She came next door to tell him her daughter was alive.

“She was crying and crying all night,” he said. “Then suddenly, hope. I was afraid there was no hope, but there was.”

metrodesk@latimes.com

Marcum is a special correspondent.
Concerned citizen helps free kidnapped Fresno girl

Gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown tangled in a blistering dispute Saturday over Whitman’s employment of an illegal immigrant housekeeper as they met for the campaign’s first and only Spanish-language debate.

The most intense exchange of the debate, held at Cal State Fresno, came when the moderator asked Whitman about the revelations earlier this week that she had employed Nicandra Diaz Santillan for nine years before firing her in 2009. Whitman has denied knowing that Diaz Santillan was undocumented until just before the dismissal.

Whitman turned to face Brown and accused Brown of being behind Santillan’s emergence.

“Jerry, you should be ashamed,” she said, turning to Brown and shaking her finger. “You and your surrogates put her deportation at risk. You put her out there. You should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions.”

Brown fired back, denying any involvement and accusing Whitman of failing to take responsibility.

“Let’s be sympathetic and let’s really empathize with the millions of people who are in the shadows and you want to keep them in the shadows and now you’re trying to evade responsibility,” he said. “Don’t run for governor if you can’t stand up on your own two feet and say, ‘Hey I made a mistake, I’m sorry, let’s go on from here.’ You have blamed her, blamed me, blamed the left, blamed the unions but you don’t take accountability.”

Whitman said she fulfilled her obligations as an employer and fired the housekeeper when the woman disclosed her undocumented status last year.

The 60-minute debate was much more confrontational, and their accusations much more personal than their first meeting, which took place Tuesday night in Davis. Saturday’s debate was sponsored by Univision, the Fresno Bee, the Fresno Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Cal State Fresno and the city of Fresno.

It was filmed at midday Saturday, with questions posed in Spanish and simultaneously translated for the candidates. It was to be aired later, after Spanish voiceovers were added to the candidates’ responses.

The meeting was plagued by technical difficulties. Immediately after the exchange about the housekeeper, the translation system stopped working, and both candidates were taken off stage for several minutes and placed in separate holding areas.

Unemployment, home foreclosures, education and the water shortage in the Central Valley also played prominent roles in the clash, but illegal immigration provided the sharpest contrast between the candidates, with Brown supporting a path to citizenship for undocumented workers and Whitman opposing one. Brown repeatedly accused Whitman of “talking out of both sides of her mouth” as she appeals to Latinos. Whitman stood by her proposals, including a guest-worker program, and emphasized instead her plans to create jobs and improve education, two areas of considerable interest to Latinos since the economy has disproportionately affected them.

Latinos are an emerging political force in California, representing 21% of the electorate, compared with 10% two decades ago. In 2008, they made up 18% of general-election voters. Republicans have long seen an opportunity to regain ground because many Latinos share some of the core values of the party, such as social conservatism, and are small-business owners. But until now GOP candidates have lacked the resources to make an all-out push for their votes.

Whitman, who has put $119 million of her own money into her campaign, has launched an aggressive outreach effort, flooding Spanish-language radio and TV and opening neighborhood offices in cities with large Latino populations. Brown, on the other hand, ran a bare-bones campaign through the summer, relying on labor unions to carry his message until last month when he began airing his own ads.

michael.mishak@latimes.com
Brown, Whitman tangle over illegal immigration in debate

For months, the budget crisis in Los Angeles has hamstrung and frustrated the city’s homicide detectives. With no money to pay for the long hours of overtime they typically work, LAPD officials saw no choice but to force detectives to take time off from the job. Cases started taking longer to solve or going cold.

The LAPD’s struggles weren’t lost on Robert Clark, an FBI assistant special agent in charge of the bureau’s anti-gang efforts in Los Angeles. Clark’s concern grew as he watched the number of gang-related killings in the city’s violent southern swatch spike in early summer. With agents, cash and equipment to spare, Clark approached LAPD officials with an unusual offer to help.

The results were striking: More than two dozen homicide cases were solved during a first-of-its-kind collaboration of the two agencies.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said veteran LAPD homicide Det. Sal LaBarbera. “We were able to clear cases at a pace that we never would have been able to hit. Twenty-seven homicides in three months? That’s unheard of.”

Though the FBI and LAPD have collaborated before, officials from both agencies said the speed with which the improvised idea came together, the scope of the assistance and its immediate effect were unprecedented.

Named Operation Save Our Streets, the effort began July 1 and teamed six FBI agents with a few dozen LAPD homicide detectives who work in some of the city’s bloodiest, most gang-saturated neighborhoods. With the agents came half a dozen vehicles, badly needed computers and hard drives, and access to the FBI’s forensic laboratory and surveillance equipment. Most importantly, Clark ponied up money to cover the LAPD detectives’ overtime costs, allowing them to forgo the department-wide policy that sends officers home on forced leave when they accrue too many hours of additional work.

The money “kept us working — allowed us to stay at it unrestricted, in the way we need to. Without it, we would have been stuck keeping regular office hours,” LaBarbera said.

The effect of the LAPD’s overtime policy on homicide cases was first reported in The Times in April.

At the start, detectives and agents focused on 13 recent killings in which the detectives believed they had strong leads and a good chance of quick arrests. Within weeks, however, the scope of the project expanded as the agents began joining detectives when they rolled out to fresh crime scenes, as well as helping with cases going back several years. In all, the teams worked on 78 homicides, LaBarbera said.

Often forced to wait for the LAPD’s overworked crime lab to process DNA evidence and conduct other forensic tests, LaBarbera said, detectives got quicker results from the FBI’s lab. Advanced cellphone tracking technology was available, as were surveillance vans outfitted with equipment not owned by the LAPD.

The case of Shavonna Jones, a 30-year-old woman allegedly shot to death by her estranged husband on May 22, underscored the reach of the FBI. LAPD detectives had spent several weeks chasing dead ends throughout the region, but lost the husband’s trail.

On information they gathered from prison inmates who knew the man, FBI agents were able to trace him to an area outside Minneapolis. Calls to the bureau’s Minneapolis field office resulted in his arrest Aug. 12.

“Would we have solved the case? Probably, but it would have taken three or four times as long,” LaBarbera said.

Arrests were also made in Nevada and Arizona. The oldest case solved went back two decades. In all, agents and detectives interviewed more than 250 witnesses and suspects, served more than two dozen search warrants and made 20 arrests, according to LAPD officials. In a few cases, the suspects whom police concluded were responsible for the killings were found to have died.

If there was a downside to the collaboration, LaBarbera said, it was that it was a stark reminder of what LAPD detectives might be able to do with more resources.

“There shouldn’t be a cap or a limit when it comes to somebody’s life,” he said. “If it were my kid, I’d want 1,000 people out there working around the clock.”

joel.rubin@latimes.com
FBI and LAPD join forces to solve more than two dozen homicide cases

The two sisters wear Islamic head scarves and say they have no problem with their secular friends and classmates, who don’t. Yet on the streets, in classrooms and along the hallways of apartment buildings in the cramped Fatih district of Istanbul, Deniz and Daria Ker remind them every now and then that they’ll stew in a fiery hell if they don’t cover up.

“We say, ‘If a single strand of hair comes out and a man sees it, you’ll be damned for 40 years,’” says Daria, an 18-year-old high school student, a white head scarf covering her head as she helps her 20-year-old sister work the cash register of a children’s clothing store. “It’s a must in our religion.”

In much of Turkey, observant and secularist Muslims live largely apart, inhabiting different enclaves within big cities like Istanbul and in different regions of the country.

But in Fatih, an ancient district that’s home to about 450,000 people near the center of Turkey’s economic and cultural capital, members of the two main cultural camps are side by side. They interact, sometimes uncomfortably, every day.

For centuries, Istanbul has been a crossroads of East and West, straddling the European and Asian continents on either side of the Bosporus strait. Fatih, a mostly working- and lower-middle-class district on the city’s European side, is a microcosm of contemporary Turkey. As a growing and prosperous Muslim middle class rises to take the helm in Turkey, Fatih’s fate also may be a test for the country’s future, and possibly that of the West as it attempts to integrate Islam into its ethnic and religious landscape.

“Turkey is one country, but there is a polarization,” says Nilufer Narli, a professor of sociology at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, who has studied Fatih since the late 1990s. “The polarization isn’t new, but it has been sharpened within the last few years.”

In Fatih, the observant and secular share new five- to10-story apartment buildings as well as the ancient streets. They shop at the same large chain clothing stores and corner groceries. They bump against one another on crosswalks, stare at the same store displays, negotiate over the price of tomatoes.

Every day, people here grapple with questions that have confounded politicians and social scientists, questions about the meaning of faith and of sovereignty over public spaces.

“The secularists lived with secularists for 150 years. Religious people lived with their own kind for 150 years,” said Etyen Mahcupyan, director of the democratization program at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, an Istanbul think tank. “Now there is a social sphere where they are tangential to each other. They are touching each other.”

Cheap rents and proximity to the center of the city lured migrants from Turkey’s Anatolian interior to Fatih, Istanbul’s oldest neighborhood. Some of the wealthier and more secular residents moved to more exclusive enclaves, but many also remained.

A low-level cultural war between the country’s surging Islamic past and its century-old commitment to secularism unfolds daily on Fatih’s streets. It is a conflict between the “closed,” those families whose women wear the hijab, or head scarf, and publicly abide by a strict interpretation of Islam, and the “open,” the secular Turks who dominated the country politically and economically during the 20th century.

Class resentment fuels the tensions. Cosmopolitan Istanbul residents speak of Fatih as though it were Kandahar, a backwater of extremists huddled together. “Those people live together because they want to live that way,” said one resident of Bebek, an upscale northern suburb of Istanbul.

The subtle struggle plays out in how one presents oneself: in the cut of an outfit, the length of a woman’s skirt, the growth of stubble on a man’s face. It is felt in the duration of a stare at a scantily clad or heavily covered-up woman, or the rumble of an imam’s voice on the mosque loudspeaker as he recites a particularly moralistic passage from the Koran.

Residents say there’s no overt antagonism between the two groups, no violence or clashes on the street. Somehow, they say, they all work, walk and play next to one another, if not always with one another.

But what is unmistakable is a cultural chauvinism that is clearly practiced by the Islamists, one that frightens and angers many secular Turks who are worried that their cultural identity is being worn away.

“There’s no harsh pressure,” Hossein Avnikar, a local official, said of complaints by secular women that they’re constantly asked to cover up. “They say it. But they say it very sweetly.”

The observant speak of masoulieh tabliq, a Muslim’s responsibility to promote the faith, to get the unbelievers to believe and the less-observant to practice their religion more strictly. As Maksut Senocak, a religiously observant 50-year-old builder explained during a tea at one of the local cafes: “Of course they would tell each other what is sin, because our prophet and imams at the mosque are saying that we should.”

The neighborhood can be a cultural minefield, especially for secular women. Mediha Hasakin, 30, an accountant who has lived in Fatih her entire life, said she has begun to cover her shoulders or wear a jacket when she walks in or near certain areas, especially Carsamba, a neighborhood of 50,000 described by many as Istanbul’s most conservative.

“We’re being careful, up on the hill,” she said, gesturing toward the warren of narrow streets where men sport lengthy beards and skull caps, women dress in all-covering Arabian-style black abayas and restaurants remain shuttered in the daytime during the dawn-to-dusk fast of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In old Istanbul quarter, Islamic and secular Turks grope toward coexistence

A suicide bombing struck a large crowd at military parade in western Iran on Wednesday, killing at least nine people and injuring 20 during a nationalist holiday meant to underscore Iran’s battle readiness, Iranian media reported.

According to Iran’s Arabic language Al-Alam television channel, the bombing struck a large crowd gathered in the city of Mahabad for annual Sacred Defense Week celebrations marking the 1988 end of the Iran- Iraq war.

Officials described the bombing as a “terrorist attack” that took place about 11 a.m. along a sidewalk.

“Almost all of the martyrs and injured are women and children,” Vahid Jalalzadeh told the official Islamic Republic News Agency. “Anti-revolution elements have always carried out such bestial acts in Mahabad in order to take revenge on the people.”

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Mahabad is in Iran’s Kurdish heartland and carries enormous symbolic weight for ethnic Kurds throughout the world. It was the capital of a short-lived Kurdish autonomous republic set up in 1946 and was the birthplace of Massoud Barzani, the de facto leader of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

The Kurdish separatist militant group PEJAK, Party for the Free Life of Kurdistan, operates in the area of Mahabad and has clashed with Iranian troops in recent years. PEJAK is the Iranian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish government for decades.

Kurds are believed to be the world’s largest ethnic group without a homeland. They have been fighting for autonomy and cultural rights against governments of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria for decades.

A nearby mountainous stretch along the Iran-Iraq border has also sheltered Al Qaeda-linked extremist groups, such as Ansar al-Islam.

daragahi@latimes.com
Suicide bomber kills 9 at parade in Iran

Two Oregon laws that prohibit making sexually explicit literature available to minors violate the Constitution because they are too broad and infringe on free-speech rights, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

A lawsuit brought by Powell’s Books, other booksellers, librarians, publishers and sex-education professionals contested the 2007 legislation and warned that what might have been “a well-intended effort to target sexual predators” puts parents, publishers, educators, health counselors and others at risk of jail or fines.

Powell’s, a Portland-based bookseller, and the other plaintiffs asked a federal district judge in the city to declare the laws unconstitutional, but the judge dismissed their petition in 2008.

The two laws were intended to prevent predators from providing sexually arousing material to potential victims.

The first law, intended to shield children under 13 from all sexually explicit content, “reached a substantial amount of material that does not appeal to the prurient interest of a child under 13, but merely appeals to regular sexual interest,” a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in reversing the district court.

The second law, restricting sexual references available to those under 18, “criminalizes fiction no more tawdry than a romance novel,” the judges added.

States may restrict minors’ access to materials found to be harmful to them, the panel said. “However, speech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them.”

Powell’s Books, the Assn. of American Publishers, Planned Parenthood Columbia/Willamette, Cascade AIDS Project and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon had argued in their appeal that if the laws were allowed to stand, a 17-year-old who lends her 13-year-old sister a copy of Judy Blume’s “Forever” could be arrested and prosecuted. Likewise, the plaintiffs warned, a health educator could be charged with a felony for discussing safe sex with anyone under 18.

Lawyers with the Oregon Department of Justice were still studying the opinion and had not decided whether to appeal the 9th Circuit ruling, said department spokesman Tony Green.

Bookstore owner Michael Powell said the laws put booksellers in the uncomfortable position of having to verify the age of young customers and determine which books might be subject to the age restrictions.

“One person’s bad influence is another’s piece of literature,” Powell said. “Those requirements are very unnerving to a bookseller, and they created a sense of bookstores being off-limits to young people, which is the opposite of what we want.”

ACLU attorney P.K. Runkles-Pearson said her organization would be willing to work with state officials “to come up with a constitutional law that meets their concerns.”

carol.williams@latimes.com

Oregon sex-literature laws ruled unconstitutional

The death toll mounted to seven Saturday and the search continued for six people still missing three days after a massive gas line explosion tore through a San Bruno neighborhood.

The cause of the disaster remained an open question, with gas company officials saying that the blown pipeline had been inspected just last year.

“We did the whole thing,” said Chris Johns, president of Pacific Gas & Electric, which owns the high-pressure natural gas pipeline that ruptured Thursday. The blast injured dozens and destroyed 37 homes. Hundreds remain displaced.

Utility officials, city leaders and politicians who toured the devastated neighborhood Saturday said a premium is being placed on ensuring the integrity of the gas line and eliminating fear that Thursday’s thunderous explosion could be repeated.

PG&E said it is reinspecting all three natural gas transmission lines serving the San Francisco Peninsula.

On Saturday, hundreds of San Bruno residents — some with gauze bandages wrapping their feet and arms — jammed a town hall meeting, expressing frustration and anger at being prevented from returning to their homes. Some were still wearing the smoky clothes they threw on as they scrambled from their burning homes Thursday evening.

But residents also gave a standing ovation to the city’s fire and police chiefs and an even warmer reception to news that many residents of the 271 evacuated houses would be allowed to return to their neighborhood Sunday. Residents who live near the blast zone, including those in the 37 destroyed homes, will not immediately be permitted to return.

“In a split second, a flash, our lives changed forever,” Mayor Jim Ruane told residents who packed the pews at St. Robert’s Catholic Church.

“This has been a tragedy of immense proportion.”

San Bruno Police Chief Neil Telford confirmed late Saturday that seven were dead and six were missing. Search-and-rescue crews continued to make their way through the disaster area with cadaver dogs.

Additional reports of missing people were filed Saturday, police said. Police officials said they do not know people are missing until relatives contact authorities to say they can’t locate family members.

The San Mateo County coroner’s office questioned the police department’s body count, saying it has only four bodies. Michelle Rippy, senior deputy coroner, said, “We have four confirmed dead.”

Although residents reported smelling gas in the days before the explosion, Johns said the utility had combed through two-thirds of the consumer calls received the week before the blast and found no record of any such complaints. Nor, he said, was there a record of crews responding to the area.

The burst pipeline, which had been installed in 1956, was not uncommonly old, experts said.

“Just like with an old airplane, the key is maintenance,” said Christopher Hart, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Although the safety board’s final report may take a year or more to complete, Hart said, any findings that merit “urgent attention” will be acted on.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said officials would push for “robust inspections” of natural gas lines that pass through residential neighborhoods.

“We cannot wait for the answers to this. Inspections are the way to go,” she said. “We have to be very clear that we’re trying to prevent this from ever happening again.”

As officials worked to secure the area and restore services, people displaced by the explosion were growing increasingly frustrated. “We’re trying to get back to our homes, but we’re getting the runaround,” said Cherie Sekulich, 35, who hasn’t been allowed back to her property since flames chased her away and destroyed her backyard deck. “All I could grab was my two cats, my two birds and my dog.”

San Bruno explosion death toll climbs to seven; six are missing

California pension officials are investigating the pay received by former top officials of Bell with an eye toward excluding large chunks of their salaries from retirement calculations.

A ruling against former City Manager Robert Rizzo and his colleagues could affect other officials across California who receive salaries from several government agencies simultaneously.

Rizzo is set to receive a pension of about $600,000 a year, which would make him the highest-paid pensioner in the California Public Employees’ Retirement fund. That amount is calculated from a salary of nearly $800,000.

His most recent contract split up his compensation so that his pay came not only for his work as city manager but as executive director of Bell’s Surplus Property Authority, Community Housing Authority, Public Financing Authority and Solid Waste and Recycling Authority.

The pay arrangement made it difficult for outsiders to determine Rizzo’s full salary, and it might come back to haunt him.

Brad Pacheco, a spokesman for CalPERS, said the fund is investigating whether pay that Rizzo received for jobs other than city administrator should count toward his pension. CalPERS is also looking at compensation for former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia and former Police Chief Randy Adams, he said.

If CalPERS rules that pay drawn from other agencies cannot be counted for retirement calculations, it could reduce pensions received by retired Bell council members. For example, former Councilman George Cole, who during some of his tenure received pay from various agencies, is receiving a pension of nearly $50,000 a year for the part-time job.

A Times survey of city managers’ pay last month turned up officials in several cities who had been receiving payments for more than one municipal job.

Rizzo’s salary and pension benefits have prompted widespread outrage and legislation that limits the raises of local government officials.

Rizzo’s attorney, James Spertus, said he would fight efforts to reduce his client’s pension.

“Mr. Rizzo never agreed to accept less compensation or to do anything that would impact his retirement,” Spertus said.

Rizzo’s latest contracts were signed by himself and Mayor Oscar Hernandez. Former City Atty. Edward Lee said he neither prepared the contract nor approved it. Hernandez did not return calls Friday.

CalPERS itself has been sharply criticized because it knew about the high salaries paid to Rizzo and Spaccia four years ago and did nothing to stop them.

Pedro Carrillo, Bell’s interim administrative officer, said CalPERS officials recently spent about three weeks at city offices going through records. He said he expected to receive a draft report identifying any problems within 10 days.

“The salaries and pensions of certain individuals are certainly a concern of myself, the city attorney and most folks in the city of Bell,” he said.

Along with the CalPERS audit, the Los Angeles County district attorney and state attorney general have launched wide-ranging investigations in Bell that include the high salaries city officials received and allegations of voter fraud and improper business dealings. The state controller is also conducting an investigation.

A review of records by The Times showed that City Council members were paid for their work on commissions that rarely met or did so for only a few minutes.

Questions about Rizzo’s pension may be the result of five new contracts he signed in September 2008, two months after his previous one went into effect. Old contracts paid him for being city manager. The new contracts paid him as city manager and as executive director of the four city commissions.

His total compensation remained the same. He received about $221,460 a year to run the city, and the remaining $566,177 was split among the authorities.

This final contract was not provided to The Times in its original request for Rizzo’s contract in June, a violation of the California Public Records Act.

In addition, Bell’s City Council on Friday announced plans to sue former city administrators, consultants and attorneys for actions that led to the city’s crisis.

City leaders said they suspect Rizzo conducted city business using his personal e-mail account and issued a subpoena to obtain copies of messages and computer files going back five years

The decision to subpoena the e-mails came after The Times reported that Rizzo had given city loans of nearly $400,000 to two businesses without public notice or council approval.

Rizzo was ordered to appear in person and produce copies of the e-mails by the next City Council meeting, which is scheduled for Sept. 20.

Spertus said his client wants the facts to come out, but the city has refused to talk to him.

“It would not surprise me if the city of Bell or other agencies in this political time … tried to pursue criminal or civil actions against Mr. Rizzo that are unfounded,” Spertus said.

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

ruben.vives@latimes.com
In wake of Bell scandal, CalPERS may change pension calculation rules

It’s a Wednesday morning, and Zenaida Tan is warming her students up with a little exercise in “Monster Math.”

That’s Tan’s name for math problems with monstrously big numbers. While most third-graders are learning to multiply two digits by two digits, Tan makes her class practice with 10 digits by two — just to show them it’s not so different.

On this spring day, her students pick apart the problem on the board — 7,850,437,826 x 56 — with the enthusiasm of game show contestants, shouting out answers before Tan can ask a question. When she accidentally blocks their view, several stand up with their notebooks and walk across the room to get a better look.

The answer comes minutes later in a singsong unison: “Four hundred and thirty-nine billion, six hundred and twenty-four million….”

Congratulations, Tan tells them, for solving it con ganas. That’s Spanish for “with gusto,” a phrase she picked up from watching “Stand and Deliver,” a favorite film of hers about the late Jaime Escalante, the remarkably successful math teacher at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has hundreds of Jaime Escalantes — teachers who preside over remarkable successes, year after year, often against incredible odds, according to a Times analysis. But nobody is making a film about them.