Problems Cited in Reform of Environmental Process : Planning: A new task force report recommends less restrictive guidelines.

A plan unveiled late last year to tightly control the hand of developers in drafting environmental reviews of their own projects would create an “administrative nightmare” if it were implemented, a top Los Angeles city official said Monday.

The harsh assessment was offered by Frank Eberhard, deputy director of the city Planning Department, after The Times obtained an 18-page report proposing a less restrictive set of guidelines as an alternative system for handling environmental reviews.

Developers say the city’s present environmental review system is too cumbersome and time-consuming--and homeowner activists say it is biased in favor of developers.

The new report drops all mention of the reform items featured in an executive directive issued late last year by former acting Planning Director Melanie Fallon. That directive had drawn sharp criticism from the building industry and the city’s Planning Commission.

Fallon subsequently rescinded her directive and appointed a task force of developers and homeowners to study the environmental review process. It is this group’s recommendations that have been obtained by The Times.

The most controversial features of Fallon’s original directive were designed to bring a new sense of credibility and objectivity to the environmental review process. Because the city allows the reviews to be conducted by private consultants hired by the developers, homeowner critics have assumed that they are skewed in developers’ favor.

Under the Fallon plan, developers generally would not have been able to have contact with the consultants conducting environmental reviews unless city officials were present nor would developers have been permitted to “negotiate or debate” with the consultants about their findings.

But Eberhard said Monday that such a system of “controls would turn out to be an administrative nightmare. We’d have to have staff attending a myriad meetings. . . . It would be a tremendous burden. We don’t have the staff to handle it.”

Eberhard made these comments as he gave a generally favorable review of the recommendations proposed in the new 18-page EIR Task Force report.

“We’ve got their recommendations, and I think we’ll probably agree to most of them,” Eberhard said.

The next step is for the Planning Department staff to make its recommendations regarding reforms of the environmental review process and to present them to the Planning Commission for adoption.

The task force recommendations generally propose that a developer’s consultants share technical environmental reports upon which they base their analyses with the Planning Department.

Eberhard said the raw information will enable the city to better evaluate consultants’ conclusions to be sure that they are fair and objective.

Even though final environmental reports are considered city documents and, as such, must be endorsed by public officials, they are based on data gathered by the developers’ consultants.