H H Brookins

The recent disclosures by The Times on the shenanigans at City Hall only illustrates the fact Los Angeles has the best politicians money can buy. If our mayor has no control over his staff or he is not aware of their actions and actions of people he knows who do business with the city such as Juanita St. John and Bishop H.H. Brookins, then how can he run a city of 4 million people? FRED LUE, Alhambra

An new management audit of Los Angeles' $37-million federally funded job training program has given the effort generally good marks, although several shortcomings were found. The audit, released Monday, is one in a series that stemmed from allegations that poverty grants were issued improperly to organizations headed by Bishop H.H. Brookins, a former Los Angeles church leader and community activist.

An anti-apartheid group has called for the expulsion of the South African consulate in Beverly Hills and announced that it is researching an initiative that would require state agencies to stop investing in companies that do business in that country. Officials of the American Roundtable, a predominantly black group headed by Bishop H. H. Brookins, said at a news conference that they would use legal, political and social means to have the South African consulate removed.

The Rev. H.H. Brookins is dead wrong and very divisive when he says the Occidental drilling proposal is a matter of "black vs. white" and "rich vs. poor." These accusations are irrelevant to this matter. Drilling operations and the additional traffic resulting to the Pacific Coast Highway will affect thousands of commuters. Industrial operations across the highway from one of our most popular beaches would offend everyone who uses them: black, white, rich and poor alike. An assault on the environment does not discriminate!

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved a plan aimed at ensuring the "integrity" of a program that was designed to aid disadvantaged minorities and women but has come under fire for benefitting political insiders. The council's unanimous vote will force all women-run and minority-owned businesses that want to become involved in the city's affirmative-action program to first be certified by the Office of Contract Administration, a branch of the Department of Public Works.

In her letter, Jean Rosenfeld characterized my earlier remarks about Occidental Petroleum's Pacific Palisades project as both "divisive" and "irrelevant" to the issue. I submit that she has failed utterly to make her case. Rosenfeld writes that the project will affect adversely thousands of commuters, when the truth is that great pains have been taken to ensure the opposite result. For instance, access to the site will not even be permitted during peak commuter traffic hours. Rosenfeld then makes the assertion that everyone who uses the popular beach across PCH from the site would be offended by its industrial use. She doesn't bother to say why. Nor does she mention that architectural treatment of the on-site equipment--enclosed within a Spanish mission-style structure--will make it virtually impossible to identify the use to which the site is being put. Rosenfeld's simple dislike for the project then leads her to the astonishing and wholly unsupported conclusion that it constitutes "an assault on the environment."

The cable television situation in South-Central Los Angeles is obviously a fiasco: In the early 1980s, when Los Angeles was in the process of awarding cable franchises, the right to serve the predominantly black area was awarded to Mayor Tom Bradley's long-time supporter Eli Broad, who is white, on the condition that he offer a 20% interest in the venture to black community leaders and groups, all of whom had close ties to the mayor. Bishop H.H.

An anti-apartheid group Monday called for the expulsion of the South African consulate in Beverly Hills and announced it is researching an initiative that would require companies in California that do business in that country to divest. Officials of the American Roundtable, a predominantly black group headed by Bishop H. H. Brookins, said at a news conference they would use legal, political and social means to have the South African consulate removed.