LAUSD EMPLOYEES WON'T BE PUNISHED.

Byline: Greg Gittrich Daily News Staff Writer

Los Angeles schools Superintendent Ruben Zacarias said Tuesday that he will not discipline the lawyer or lobbyists who were involved in trying to weaken environmental protections on new school sites.

Zacarias accepted a report, which he had commissioned by Chief Administrative Officer David Koch and General Counsel Richard Mason, that found mistakes were made but there was no intentional wrongdoing.

The report found that Assistant General Counsel Brad Hogin, who was hired in March, played the key role in drafting amendments to pending legislation that would have weakened some environmental protections governing petroleum contamination.

Raising serious questions about administrative leadership within the district, the report traced how amendments were inserted into pending legislation by Assistant Superintendent Santiago Jackson and Tiffanie Heben, the district's Sacramento lobbyists.

``I'm convinced he (Hogin) did not do it with the intention to defy the board and my clear stance requiring state environmental oversight at school sites,'' Zacarias said. ``I can't fault employees for taking initiative, but this also brings to our attention the need for better coordination of policy-related decisions.''

Hogin's three amendments to state Senate Bill 162 allowed children to occupy schools while environmental cleanup was ongoing, permitted districts to avoid reporting oil contamination on campuses and diminished the role of state environmental inspectors in the selection of school sites.

State Sen. Tom Hayden greeted the report's findings Tuesday with skepticism.

Hayden said the probe should have been conducted by the Office of Investigations under Don Mullinax, which would have ensured its independence.

Hayden doubted the conclusion that Hogin did not intend to exempt the district from reporting oil contamination as the report said.

Hogin's actions, he said, seemed designed to circumvent reform-minded Zacarias and the School Safety team and reflected an ongoing fight between reformers within the LAUSD and the organization's old guard.

``The traditionalists have tended to minimize safety problems, and they're very threatened by the possibility of reform,'' he said.

District officials worried

Hayden said some district officials are worried that toxic problems at Belmont Learning Complex, the nation's costliest high school, which is being built downtown, might fuel support for the senator's plan to have another public agency build schools in Los Angeles.

``The larger agenda is twofold: one, get Belmont built; two, make sure the toxic issues are not so problematic in the future that the district will lose control over real estate acquisition,'' Hayden said.

Assemblyman Scott Wildman, D-Glendale, another frequent Belmont critic, also doubted the report's findings, saying the district was trying to place all blame for the incident on a single person.

``The Los Angeles Unified School District is going to have to take responsibility for its actions,'' said Wildman. ``It's not enough for them to simply blame someone else.''

After Hayden noticed the amendments to SB 162 on May 6, the changes subsequently were removed from the bill, which the school district supports.

Zacarias said a policy oversight committee established in the wake of the Hogin amendments will ensure the problems won't arise again.

While the amendments were made individually during a six-week span, Hogin's supervisors said they had no clue what was going on.

At a meeting with Daily News reporters and editors, Koch, Mason, Hogin, Jackson and environmental consultant Angelo Bellomo tried to explain the mistakes that were made, including the lack of supervision that led to the unapproved changes.

There was ``no deliberate or orchestrated effort by district staff or our outside counsel'' to weaken the bill, Koch said.

The report states, ``It is clear to us that amendments did not receive proper vetting and review by Safety Team members and district senior management.''

Mason expressed complete confidence in Hogin and chalked up what happened to misplaced initiative.

Hogin said he didn't think the amendments were ``a big deal,'' and he never intended to weaken environmental oversight.

Looking back and now having a better understanding of the environmental controversies swirling around the district's construction program, he said he could see ``intense symbolic meaning'' to the efforts to amend legislation.

Bellomo, the district's top environmental scientist, said even without malicious intent, ``those amendments weakened the bill.''

Hogin drafted changes to the bill April 14, May 3 and May 6.

The first set of changes called for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to evaluate school sites only if a preliminary review indicated problems.

Meant to streamline

The change was recommended by the Senate Education Committee to streamline the process for nonurban districts that would not always require the extensive oversight, he said.

The amendments were inconsistent with LAUSD policy that called for all schools to receive DTSC review, according to the district investigation.

On the second set of changes, the report found Hogin was following directions from district lobbyists who asked Hogin to add direct citations to laws into the bill that would specify which contaminants would be reportable.

Among the citations was a reference to a federal law that excluded petroleum as a contaminant.

The final set of changes allowed districts to put kids into a school on a contaminated site while remediation measures were being carried out if state environmental inspectors said it would not jeopardize the students' safety.

The language for the amendment was contained in an April 5 analysis of several pending bills compiled by the oil industry law firm of McClintock Weston.

Zacarias, Mason and other officials participated in the April 5 session with the law firm but denied the analysis served as the basis of any amendments.

``At no time - and I'll take a lie detector on this - were amendments discussed in my presence,'' Zacarias said. ``At no time.''

Daily News Staff Writer David R. Baker contributed to this story.