BURBANK PROMISES L.A. AIRPORT EXPANSION INPUT.

Byline: Lee Condon Staff Writer

Hoping to appease Los Angeles residents and politicians angry about the proposed Burbank Airport expansion deal, Burbank Mayor Stacey Murphy on Friday said she wants Los Angeles representatives to be more involved in future airport discussions.

``I'm hoping we can get back on the right track with this,'' said Murphy, who wrote a letter to Los Angeles City Attorney James Hahn saying Los Angeles officials will be consulted when Burbank and the airport discuss what level of environmental review needs to be done for the expansion.

Last month, Hahn threatened to sue Burbank and the airport unless a new environmental impact analysis is done for the project.

Hahn was most angry that the tentative deal between Burbank and the airport would ban all takeoffs to the east over Glendale and eastern Burbank. Instead, all the flights would continue to head west over Los Angeles communities such as Studio City and North Hollywood.

Murphy has invited the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to be involved in the city's traffic study of the airport's expansion proposal.

Keith Pritsker, a Los Angeles deputy city attorney who has handled Los Angeles litigation against Burbank Airport for 10 years, said he was pleased that Murphy wants Los Angeles to be involved in discussions about environmental review of the project.

``It's an encouraging response,'' Pritsker said.

The city of Los Angeles will push for an environmental study of the effect of a ban on eastern takeoffs. Pritsker said eastern takeoffs are only banned now because the terminal is located too close to airport runways. But under the expansion plan, the terminal would be moved farther away from the runway. No eastern takeoff ban was mentioned in the EIR the airport approved several years ago for its expansion.

``There was an underlying assumption that when the new terminal was built, the ban would be lifted,'' Pritsker said. ``But now there is this little twist that they want to ban eastern takeoffs. Our residents feel this is being done to push all the noise over Los Angeles.''

After years of battling the expansion issue in court, Burbank and Burbank Airport reached a tentative ``framework deal'' that would, if approved by the Burbank City Council, allow the long-planned expansion to proceed.

But since then, the city of Burbank and the airport have been attacked by various groups that contend they were left out of talks that led to the deal. A local citizens group has started a petition drive to put an initiative on the ballot to kill the deal. The Air Transport Association has decried an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. terminal closure plan as an illegal ``de facto curfew.'' Rep. Howard Berman, D-Mission Hills, has said the city of Burbank betrayed him by supporting the ban on eastern takeoffs. The most recent attack came from Hahn, with his threat to sue.

Carl Meseck, president of the Airport Authority, also has written Hahn a letter since the city attorney threatened to sue.

``Both parties anticipated that any number of concerns would arise once the framework was announced, and you can be assured that the city of Los Angeles will receive appropriate consideration in the review process that lies ahead,'' Meseck wrote.

Also on Friday, the Glendale City Council picked a replacement for longtime airport commissioner Carl Raggio, who quit the panel in June. Raggio was angry that council members were trying to tell him how to vote on airport issues. Glendale City Manager Jim Starbird held Raggio's post on a temporary basis but council members needed to find a permanent replacement.

The council, by a vote of 3-1, picked Glendale police Officer Carl Povilaitis. Povilaitis is a member of the Police Department's Community Police Partnership unit.

He will serve out the remainder of Raggio's term, which expires in May 2001.