BOARD BOWED TO PRESSURE IN KILLING VOTE.

Byline: Tony Knight Daily News Staff Writer

After two years of debate, planning and negotiations, the $87 million deal with Kajima International to build the Belmont Learning Complex was slated to come before the school board on Feb. 24.

Board member Victoria Castro, the champion of the new high school, had the four votes she needed to win with board President Jeff Horton and members Mark Slavkin and Barbara M. Boudreaux.

The agenda packets with the proposed contract had been distributed to the public that Friday, Feb. 21. And even as late as the previous Wednesday, Horton, Castro and Dominic Shambra, LAUSD development chief, met with the Daily News editorial board seeking support for a decision the following Monday.

But the matter never came up that Monday. Because of a sequence of behind-the-scenes events that weekend, the Belmont deal was quietly pulled off the agenda for political reasons.

According to sources close to the negotiations, by Feb. 21, Horton and Slavkin had come under intense pressure from Hotel Employees Union Local 11 and the L.A. County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, which had threatened to pull their support from Proposition BB, the district's $2.4 billion bond measure on the April 8 ballot.

The sources said that labor leaders had threatened former Assemblyman Richard Katz, the honorary chairman of the Prop. BB campaign, that they would oppose the bond measure. They said Katz, in turn, worked to convince Horton and Slavkin that a Belmont vote in February could sink the bond measure.

``Katz said the potential of blowing the bonds was too big,'' said one of the sources. ``He told them, `You should have seen the things they (the unions) were going to throw at us.' ''

Horton denied that the Belmont vote was postponed until after the election because of labor union threats. Slavkin did not return repeated phone calls.

Katz, who expects to run next year for the state Senate seat being vacated by termed-out Herschel Rosenthal, and who probably will be opposed in the primary by City Councilman Richard Alarcon, has denied being pressured by the unions.

``I would have held a press conference and said they're holding the kids hostage over a labor dispute,'' he said.

Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the federation of labor, denied the unions threatened to scuttle the bond measure but acknowledged he had extensive conversations with Katz about Prop. BB.

``Richard asked for our support for Prop. BB for months,'' Contreras said. ``We had many conversations discussing strategy. Even today, with his bid for state senate, we had conversations with him.''

Maria Elena Durazo, Contreras' wife, and the president of Local 11, did not return repeated phone calls. But David Koff, the Local 11 researcher and analyst who has been the union's point man against the project, asserted it was Katz who pressured Horton and Slavkin.

``They were under a hell of a lot of pressure from Katz and the bond campaign,'' Koff said. ``The message was if you guys pass this thing on Feb. 24, the bond measure is dead because it's too controversial. It's a lightning rod. So Slavkin backed off. He's always been the swing vote.''

Despite the objections of Castro, Horton and Slavkin said they could not vote to approve the Kajima contract until after the election. That meant the contract had no hope of approval.

Castro confirmed that the decision to retreat on Belmont was made in a series of meetings over that weekend.

``I wasn't part of that discussion, but it's been shared that if we wanted the County Federation support for BB, you had to postpone the vote on Belmont,'' Castro said.

According to one source, the discussion ended Saturday night with plans to talk to Kajima representatives to get their commitment to stay in the deal until after the election. With Kajima's commitment secured on Sunday, Horton and Slavkin promised to vote for the Belmont project in the first board meeting after the election, the source said.