School Officials Brand Oxy Claim a Vote ‘Gimmick’

Los Angeles school district officials on Wednesday branded as an “election-year gimmick” claims by supporters of an oil-drilling initiative that its approval by voters will generate added millions of dollars for education.

“We don’t get any bucks,” said school board President Roberta Weintraub, adding, “We’ve had enough problems with people believing that the lottery has helped.”

For weeks, television and radio commercials on behalf of Proposition P on the Nov. 8 ballot have said that the Pacific Palisades drilling project, if allowed to go forward, will generate up to $275 million over 20 years for services such as education, police and toxic waste enforcement. The ballot measure, sponsored by the Occidental Petroleum Corp., would uphold Occidental’s authority to drill on a two-acre site adjacent to the Pacific Coast Highway near Will Rogers State Beach.

Public agencies would receive revenues in the form of taxes and royalties the company would pay based on how much oil and gas it produced. The $275-million estimate of these revenues is based on an assumption that drilling in the 594 acres included in three Palisades oil districts will yield 60 million barrels of oil and up to 120 billion cubic feet of gas over 20 years. More conservative estimates place the expected yield at two-thirds those figures.

From Occidental’s estimated $275 million that it would pay out of revenues, drilling proponents--including Occidental attorney Mickey Kantor--have said that up to $63 million would go to the schools over the 20-year period. Kantor continued to insist Wednesday that the figure holds up regardless of attacks on the measure by Weintraub and fellow board member Rita Walters.

“I would suggest to Miss Weintraub and Miss Walters they ought to worry about our students and their education, not about a proposition on the ballot that they have nothing to do with,” Kantor said.

At a news conference at district headquarters, Weintraub, Walters, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky and Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Tarzana) denounced what they called the drilling measure’s “cynical” use of schools to win voter backing. Yaroslavsky is a co-sponsor of Proposition O, which would kill the Occidental project and establish a drilling ban along the city’s coastline.

“I deeply resent Occidental . . . using school children to justify their profit motives,” Walters said. “This is really an election-year gimmick.”

Friedman, a member of the Assembly Education Committee, said the Proposition P claims that the measure’s passage would help funnel more money to the schools “is a fraud on the schools and the people of Los Angeles.”

Friedman said that currently the Los Angeles Unified School District receives a maximum of about $1.6 billion a year, most of that coming from state pass-through funds from local property taxes. Because of state legislation that establishes a ceiling on the amount the state may spend on educating public school students, any additional funds generated from the drilling project would merely lead to a corresponding reduction elsewhere, Friedman said.

‘No Gain for the Schools’

“The clear arithmetic of Proposition P is no gain for the schools,” Friedman said.

In response to questions, Friedman acknowledged that additional tax revenues generated by the drilling project could conceivably alleviate the tax burden on other state programs. But, he added, there is no guarantee--such as was written into the 1984 law establishing the California Lottery--that any additional funds would go to schools.

Proposition P spokesman Kantor said a city initiative could not legally earmark funds for the schools, but contended nevertheless that more money would be available. Kantor added that based on the 60-million-barrel estimate, the district could, over a 15-year period, expect up to $2.3 million in royalties from leases held on Canyon Elementary School in Pacific Palisades.

But district officials placed the royalty income at a much lower figure, contending it would be no more than $30,000 a year.