BURBANK ADVISER FIRED FOR SLUR : UTILITY ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER HAD BEEN OUSTED BEFORE.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

The Burbank City Council bounced Mike Nolan off a utility advisory board Tuesday for using a racial slur to refer to the Japanese owners of Sony Corp.

The unanimous council decision came just hours after the council and city officials welcomed a group of teen-age exchange students from Burbank's sister city in Ota, Japan.

Councilwoman Susan Spanos made the motion to eject Nolan, saying she was ``shocked'' by his reference last week during a public comment period.

``It's very important that not only we, but also the people we appoint . . . respect people regardless of what they look like, talk like or act like,'' she said. ``We need to set a tone of tolerance. What we do up here trickles down to the rest of the community.''

Nolan, who sat on a city advisory board to its Public Service Department, could not be reached late Tuesday for comment.

Nolan was criticizing a redevelopment agency program that offers incentives for companies to move into Burbank when he made the racial slur. All five council members immediately took Nolan to task for using the term ``g----.''

But Nolan refused to apologize, giving the explanation that he is a Vietnam veteran and is entitled to express his views about Asians.

Council members decided at last week's meeting that they would vote on whether to oust Nolan.

Nolan's brother, Pat Nolan, was the assemblyman for Burbank and Glendale's 43rd District from 1978 through 1994. Pat Nolan currently is in a halfway house serving out the remainder of a 33-month sentence on federal political corruption charges.

It's the second time the Burbank City Council has moved to dump Nolan in the middle of an appointed term. In 1991, the council, then made up of five entirely different members, voted to remove Nolan as the city's representative to the Metropolitan Water District, citing both his aggressive style and his high travel expenses.

At the time, Nolan said his travel expenses were proper. He charged that his MWD ouster was a political payback because he supported the council campaign of Mary Lou Howard, a former member of the council.

Nolan's use of the racial term was criticized outside City Hall as well. Officials with the Asian-Pacific-American Legal Center in downtown Los Angeles said the epithet was ``racially derogatory.''

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Photo: Mike Nolan

Used racial term for Asians