BUILDER PAID TO PUSH PROJECT PALMER HIRED LOBBYISTS TO BOOST LAS LOMAS TO OFFICIALS.

Byline: Heather MacDonald Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - The firm seeking to build a 5,800-home development in the Newhall Pass paid three lobbying companies more than $31,000 from January to March to urge Los Angeles city officials to approve the project, records show.

Two companies owned by developer Dan S. Palmer Jr. have spent $242,617 since Las Lomas was proposed in mid-2001 to lobby the Los Angeles Planning Department and the Office of Zoning Administration, as well as the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor James Hahn, according to Los Angeles Ethics Commission records.

Palmer Investments paid Greer/Dailey/Minter and Cerrell Associates a total of $10,673 from Jan. 1 to March 31 to urge officials to support the Las Lomas development.

Las Lomas Land Co., which is Palmer's development company, paid Allen Matkins Leck Gamble & Mallory an additional $21,050 to lobby on behalf of the project in the same period. Sydney Dailey, a spokeswoman for Palmer, has in the past declined to discuss the company's lobbying efforts and did not return a phone call Monday.

Las Lomas - which would include a 2.3 million-square-foot business park - is planned on 555 acres in the unincorporated area of Los Angeles County north of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeway interchange. It is closer to Santa Clarita than to the city of Los Angeles, but Palmer is seeing annexation to the latter, while meeting opposition from the former.

Palmer touts Las Lomas - Spanish for ``the hills'' - as a small town with charm, and the most enlightened, smart-growth, transit-oriented development ever proposed in Southern California.

The developer wants the project to be annexed to Los Angeles in order to have access to reliable utilities through that city's Department of Water and Power.

However, Santa Clarita officials are attempting to annex the project site in an effort to block the development, which the Santa Clarita City Council has condemned. In turn, Las Lomas Land Co. has sued the city, claiming that Santa Clarita violated state law in moving to block the project.

``Palmer's strategy appears to be to work behind the scenes at Los Angeles City Hall rather than through an open and public process,''said Planning Director Jeff Lambert.

Palmer has accused Santa Clarita officials of prejudging the project before Los Angeles planners complete an environmental study of the effects it would have on its mountainous surroundings.

The project also has drawn fire from environmentalists and some county officials, who fear that the dense project would add to freeway congestion and destroy the wilderness separating the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

The Santa Clarita City Council has spent $50,000 to urge Los Angeles officials to reject the development and has set aside $100,000 more for opposition efforts this year.

``Dan Palmer has to spend more because he's trying to sell snake oil to the Los Angeles City Council,'' said Steve Afriat, Santa Clarita's lobbyist. ``Santa Clarita doesn't have to spend more because it has merit on its side.''

Santa Clarita has twice before used money from the city's general fund to battle projects outside its jurisdiction that the City Council opposed, spending more than $2 million in the ongoing fight against a planned sand- and-gravel mine in Soledad Canyon and close to $1 million to prevent a landfill from being built in Elsmere Canyon in the early 1990s.