Senate Backs Trump Plan for L.A. Site but Assembly Balks

SACRAMENTO —  The state Senate voted Wednesday night to support a newly launched political effort aimed at helping Donald Trump block construction of a high school on the old Ambassador Hotel site in Los Angeles’ mid-Wilshire district.

The Legislature’s upper chamber then approved a proposed $800-million bond issue negotiated by Gov. George Deukmejian and legislative leaders for school construction statewide.

A cantankerous Assembly, however, got tangled up in the Trump issue and other disputes and shot down a separate $325-million bond bill sponsored by Deukmejian aimed at helping middle-income Californians buy their first homes.

The Assembly action threatened to unravel a hefty $3.6-billion package of bond issues fashioned by the governor and the legislative leadership for the Nov. 6 ballot.

The so-called “Trump amendment” making it more expensive for the Los Angeles Unified School District to purchase the 17-acre Ambassador site was contained in the $800-million bond package for school construction.

Basically, the Trump plan, proposed by Deukmejian and agreed to by the Assembly and Senate leaders, would restrict the state’s contribution toward purchase of school land to $2.25 million an acre. For the Ambassador site, this translates to a state contribution of about $39 million, instead of $50 million previously promised by the State Allocation Board. Trump, owner of the Ambassador site, wants to build a giant skyscraper there.

Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), a supporter of building the school on the former hotel land, led an unsuccessful effort to beat down the “Trump amendment.” He lost on a lopsided 23-12 vote that split the Los Angeles delegation.

“They don’t want us to buy the Ambassador Hotel,” he told the Senate. “This is really what it’s all about.”

But Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), usually a backer of the school district, “most reluctantly” opposed Torres, asserting that $2.25 million per acre “is an awful lot of money.”

For Trump to build the skyscraper, Roberti insisted, “is reasonable, makes sense, is economical.” He said the mid-Wilshire district “needs an infusion of private dollars, not public dollars.”

The school bond issue never came up in the Assembly, which got bogged down debating the governor’s housing bill. That measure was rejected in a bipartisan assault described by some members as a revolt against the legislative leadership. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said it would be a “waste of time” to take up any other bond measures Wednesday night, because Deukmejian would not sign them unless he got approval for his housing proposal.

Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), who carried the bill on the floor, attributed its rejection in part to the uproar over the Ambassador Hotel site.

“Brown and Roberti cut a deal that their members want to renegotiate,” Nolan said. “The L.A. legislators try to leverage everything they can to have money pour into the city of L.A. to the exclusion of the rest of the state.”

But Speaker Brown said the school fight was not linked to the housing bill. Whatever happens on the Trump site, he said, the housing package would probably have to be amended to allay the concerns of lawmakers who complained that the program would help the well-to-do buy fancy homes in expensive areas while failing to adequately address the problems of the homeless.

The measure’s critics complained that it would allow a couple earning $84,000 a year in San Mateo County to buy a home valued as high as $240,000 with a low-interest loan from the state covering almost half of the sales price.

Needing 54 votes for passage, the bill received only 29.