CHICAGO LOVE NOTE TO BFI?

Byline: Kimit Muston Local View

I don't think Hallmark makes a card for this kind of thing, but if it did, then Browning Ferris Industries' recent little valentine to City Hall might have read something like this: ``Roses are red. Violets are blue. You think you set the rules here? Hey, L.A.! Screw you!''

BFI, which operates the Sunshine Canyon Landfill, sent this love note to the Bureau of Sanitation on May 19, demanding that the residents of this city, basically, immediately submit. BFI is holding our trash hostage. We either sign a new 10-year contract with BFI, or the company will immediately raise our fees for using Sunshine Canyon by 50 percent, assuming it even accepts our trash at all.

Remember, our brave leader, Mayor James Hahn, has pledged that we will cease using the city side of Sunshine Canyon after 2006, which is when our current contract with BFI expires. The city attorney's office is currently reviewing the missive to see if BFI's threatened actions violate their contract. But then a contract is just a piece of paper, if you play by Chicago rules.

Chicago rules were established by the Chicago Suburban Refuse Disposal Corp. - 200 self-described Windy City scavengers who signed an agreement to ``refrain from soliciting the customers of other members'' and promising ``if a member scavenger wishes to raise prices charged to a particular customer, other member scavengers ... will either refuse to deal with the customer or quote a higher price.''

In the late 1970s, BFI and its big brother, Waste Management Industries, swallowed up the CSRDC, but retained many of their executives. Both companies have subsequently repeatedly been sued and convicted of price fixing and antitrust violations - in Ohio, Atlanta, Philadelphia (where the defendants settled for about $63 million) and even here in Southern California, to mention just a few.

But for some reason - which I certainly wouldn't think was because politicians in both parties have been bought off with BFI campaign donations - the U.S. Justice Department has never sought antitrust or price fixing charges against BFI, even with its string of local convictions. That may explain where BFI gets the chutzpah to send City Hall a poison pen note like this one.

To quote Greg Loughnane, the BFI District Manager, BFI is merely benevolently offering us a better deal. ``We can always do better deals for you as a city if you stay with us. If, in fact, you don't, then the deal isn't going to be as good.''

Wow. This guy should write for ``The Sopranos.''

Loughnane insisted the threatened 50 percent increase in dumping fees was simply to cover rising landfill costs, which sounds familiar if you've read the testimony of some former BFI employees. One ex-employee in Atlanta testified that he was coached to blame rising prices on ``landfill costs increasing, fuel goes up, cost of living, it didn't matter. ... I liked the landfill. ... The safest one I thought was landfill. ... It was nothing to do with reality.''

The reality is that the city of Los Angeles owns the only road leading into Sunshine Canyon, sort of the landfill's jugular vein. Now, you might think that all it would take to shut down BFI would be to plant a smog check station right in the middle of that road and start ticketing the diesel trash trucks for excessive emissions. But the last time L.A. held up permission to use the road because of BFI operating violations, the company threatened the city with a multibillion-dollar lawsuit. The City Attorney's Office yanked its skirt up over its head and surrendered.

Technically, L.A. taxpayers still own that road and pay to maintain it, but for all intents and purposes, it's BFI's personal property now.

Yup, BFI has us by the trash bags, if you believe BFI. Shipping our trash by rail to the Eagle Mountain Landfill in Riverside County or the Mesquite Landfill in Imperial County, as we were planning to do in a few years anyway, could cost us about $60 a ton - which is about what BFI would charge us after its extra-contractual price increase. But what price can you put on freedom?

BFI is used to bullying its customers and opponents alike. But isn't it time that somebody sent a little Chicago Valentine in return? I suggest:

``Violets are blue, and roses are red. If BFI gets too arrogant, it could end up ... disenfranchised.''