It is the difference between a wedding and a funeral.
The drastic change in moods between last summer and this was on shiny display yesterday when Culver City residents, hat firmly gripped in hand, returned to downtown Los Angeles for the first time in almost a year.
They were seeking, even begging, for relief from the still-new oil drilling regulations that were imposed on them last year — some say recklessly — by the sometimes-remote County Board of Supervisors.
It was quickly obvious that the main change from last summer was that the Supervisor with authority over Culver City had been replaced.
The aging, immensely unpopular Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who earned the community’s lasting enmity with her final pre-retirement act last October, has been supplanted by Mark Ridley-Thomas, 20 years younger, who is being spoken of today in heroic terms.
On the anniversary of his eighth month in office, Mr. Ridley-Thomas enjoyed a breakout moment that could seal a personal relationship with Culver City for the rest of his tenure, however many terms he chooses to serve.
Let the Celebration Begin
Fulfilling a campaign promise, he steered a door-opening motion through the unpredictable waters of the Board of Sups that could lead to undoing much of the perceived damage caused by last year’s desperately rushed drilling regulations.
Ms. Brathwaite Burke’s position was that, after 16 years at 500 W. Temple St., she wanted — and deserved — to roar into golden retirement on the wings of a meaningful legacy.
Throughout a lengthy, precedent-shattering career, the virtually gilded Ms. Brathwaite Burke was routinely portrayed in strongly favorable terms. For bookkeeping purposes, since 1992, the Supervisor nearly always got what she demanded.
She said she was not going to lose what she cherished most at the end, least of all to a distant constituency in Culver City she hardly ever acknowledged anyway.
She chose Plains Exploration & Production Co., PXP to the world, as her vehicle to her goal of a special legacy. This final, ambitious achievement was to take the form of a cement-strong, far-reaching oil drilling ordinance, a glistening, high-profile tribute that would be in place for Los Angeles County long after she goes to heaven.
Opening the History Books
The seeds for yesterday’s anticipated first-act-of-a-comeback drama were planted three years ago last January, when an overnight gas leak drove sleeping, startled residents of Culver Crest from their beds at 2 in the morning.
At the time, few persons were aware of PXP’s drilling presence, even though various parties had plumbed the Inglewood or Baldwin Hills oil field, as it also is known, off and on since 1924.
In other words, it was a typical relationship between Southern California neighbors:
Don’t look at each other when you pass on the street. Ignoring the other person helpfully obviates an obligation to speak. If you don’t look at or speak to each other, the party of the second part obviously must not exist.
Ergo, for most, PXP was invisible.
In the clutter and chaos of the aftermath of the leak, PXP, in the person of personable executive vice president Steve Rusch, the Southern California face of the Texas-based company, hewed to the articles of professional protocol.
Formal apologies were executed in Council Chambers at City Hall, and a vague bond of a cool but binding relationship supposedly was sealed between Culver City and its friendly neighborhood oil drilling company, PXP.
About that time, Ms. Brathwaite Burke and other parts of the County governmental machinery took notice of PXP, which began flexing its muscles about vastly broadening its drilling ambitions.
The Baldwin Hills oil field is 2 miles long, packing enough drilling profits beneath the surface to enrich many people far beyond the wide borders of even the Westside.
Helpful Helpers
With the support of faceless, well-placed bureaucrats in Sacramento, PXP, far off the public stage, began planning its grandest drilling strategy yet.
The trouble was, whenever nosey lawyers or residents from Culver Crest and surrounding neighborhoods tried to peer over the shoulders of the County or PXP or Sacramento operatives to gain a clue about what was going on, they were shooed away.
Soon enough, attorneys John Kuechle and Ken Kutcher organized residents into a formidable group that was effective enough to scare Ms. Brathwaite Burke without saying “boo.”
Through the first half of last year, they kept waiting for an environmental impact report and a community standards district document to reveal the breadth of PXP’s expansion intentions and the degree of control or will the County would exercise.
Ms. Brathwaite Burke — working assiduously with PXP, off-stage — and her friends managed to keep the red-hot papers away from the public at least three months longer than the Kuechle-Kutcher group thought reasonable.
Heads I Win, Tails I Win
What followed from late June last year until late October was a mouse-and-cat game that Ms. Brathwaite Burke played with a frustrated and increasingly nettled community worried about their safety and worried about their health. They fretted that PXP, which effectively was writing its own regulations for increased drilling, would be allowed to operate with abandon.
When knowledgeable, stunningly well-informed, residents confronted and pleaded with Ms. Brathwaite Burke for more time to study complicated and lengthy regulations spread across hundreds of pages — does this scenario sound familiar? — the Supervisor, with retirement knocking on her door but in utter control of the levers, said there wasn’t time.
What was the hurry?
She couldn’t say, as the clock to retirement inexorably ticked to a deafening roar while residents were just plain ticked off.
On Decision Day for the County Board of Supervisors, after a long summer of huge turnouts, an expectant Westside crowd sat through a day-long marathon for an ordinance action that was dropped to the bottom of the agenda. They were hoping for at least courtesy-weight regulation tightening, but they were disappointed.
With the smallest nod, Supervisors approved Ms. Brathwaite Burke’s exit scheme, to the delight of PXP.
That is where matters rested until Mr. Ridley-Thomas was elected days later, a deadline Ms. Brathwaite Burke frantically, and successfully, was trying to beat.
Wherever Mr. Ridley-Thomas campaigned last year, within miles of the Baldwin Hills oil field, he spoke aggressively about how he would assist worried residents in upgrading the oil drilling regulations.
A Ridley-Thomas Sweep?
Heavily supported by Culver City voters in last November’s runoff election against L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks, who has vanished from public view, Mr. Ridley-Thomas paid the first greater Culver City area dividend on his campaign yesterday.
With momentum building in the present optimistic environment, he not only could be elected to the City Council, but possibly to all five seats.
