Senate Panel Hands Soka a Victory in Land Fight : Appropriations: The action would prevent the use of federal funds in the takeover of the university parcel for Santa Monica Mountains parkland.

WASHINGTON —  Soka University of Calabasas won a surprise victory Wednesday when a key Senate committee adopted language that would prevent park officials from using federal funds to take over the school’s mountain campus through condemnation proceedings.

Opponents of the school’s planned expansion also suffered a setback Wednesday in Sacramento, where the staff of a state agency that regulates higher education said they have no authority over Soka because it is more of a business than a school.

Officials with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, backed by California parks authorities, want to obtain part of the school’s campus for a park headquarters. Soka, which is seeking to expand from about 100 to 4,400 students, has refused to sell despite increasing pressure from state and federal authorities--raising the prospect of condemnation proceedings.

At the urging of Soka’s lobbyists, the condemnation restriction was included in an appropriations bill by the Senate appropriations subcommittee on interior and related agencies and later by the full Appropriations Committee. The measure now goes to the Senate.

The recreation area suffered another blow Wednesday when the Senate appropriations panels approved only $7.5 million for acquisition of land in the Santa Monica Mountains in the 1992 fiscal year--far less than the $14 million earmarked by its House counterpart. A conference committee of House and Senate lawmakers will have to reconcile the amounts in the final spending bills.

The park’s congressional supporters, apparently caught unaware by Wednesday’s action, are expected to use the conference to attempt to remove the condemnation language.

“It caught us by surprise,” said Julie Zeidner, a spokeswoman for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that acquires land for the national recreation area. “This would seriously hamstring the conservancy and other agencies to use condemnation.”

Park advocates have sought $14 million to purchase 248 of the 580 acres owned by the Japan-based school. But university officials, who have sought permission from Los Angeles County to build a campus in the mountain meadow, have rejected proposals to relocate.

The state and federal parks agencies say the federal funds would go toward offering Soka an as-yet undisclosed sum for the land. If turned down by the university, state or federal parks agencies have the legal authority to begin condemnation proceedings. The government agency would then have to pay the equivalent of the appraised market value for the property situated along Mulholland Highway.

Soka maintains that the 248 acres are worth $50 million; parks agencies have estimated the value at $30 million. A final determination would be left up to the courts.

The language in the Senate appropriations bill does not mention Soka but is clearly intended to aid the university. Bernetta Reade, a Soka spokeswoman, acknowledged that university officials had retained a Washington lobbying firm to seek such action in the Senate after they had failed to win approval of a condemnation ban in the House spending bill.

“To protect its interests, the university pursued the insertion of the language,” Reade said. “They did so because the conservancy and the National Park Service had been threatening condemnation of their property for over 1 1/2 years.”

In Sacramento meanwhile, the state Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education declared “that the current operations of Soka University of Los Angeles is not in our jurisdiction.”

The conclusion was part of a letter from the council’s assistant director to Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), who three weeks ago called on the agency to investigate “the university’s legal status and educational program.”

Hayden, chairman of the Assembly Committee on Higher Education, said the council’s letter raises more questions than it answers about Soka. He said it seems to say that Soka officials don’t “have any real right to call themselves a college or university under state law.”

Reade disputed Hayden’s interpretation, describing Soka as a nonprofit business that conducts research and administers English-language courses for about 100 students at a time for Soka University of Japan, which is accredited in that country.

“We never believed we were . . . conducting any activities on campus in violation of the law and this reaffirms that,” Reade said.

Hayden said his interest in school was twofold. First, he said, as an environmentalist he doesn’t “want to lose 500 acres of the mountains” to a school. Hayden also said he has been conducting his own investigation of the school, in part, because it “purports to be a university.”

Soka’s Reade said the school finds it “most curious” that Hayden would seek an investigation “without any effort to learn about the entity.”

In urging the investigation, Hayden said Soka has failed to properly qualify for an exemption from state review and should be subject “to state licensure.”

Based on Soka’s annual statement describing its courses as career-oriented, state officials have granted the school an exemption from a broad range of accounting and academic requirements.

Kenneth Miller, executive director of the postsecondary and vocational council, said Soka does not offer degrees, vocational programs or continuing education classes, which would subject it to state oversight.

“It’s not a school under our jurisdiction, so it’s some other kind of business,” Miller said. “They don’t need to be approved for what they do.”

The Legislature established the council--now in its first year of operation--after it was determined that the state Department of Education had failed to properly regulate many institutions awarding “easy” degrees. Better-known colleges and universities, whose credits and degrees are easily transferred to another institution, belong to the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges.

Reade said that as Soka gears up to expand its campus, it plans to seek accreditation from the association.