Former Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, who served the northwestern San Fernando Valley for 24 years, has died at the age of 89, City Attorney Mike Feuer said Tuesday, July 21. City officials were informed by a former staffer that Bernson had passed away the night before.
Bernson fought hard to improve earthquake safety in the city and was a booster of efforts to empower the San Fernando Valley to secede from the rest of Los Angeles.
“I knew Hal Bernson for over quarter of a century, having served with him on the City Council,” Feuer said in a statement. “His constituents strongly supported him, and no one in the council’s history did more to prepare L.A. for the next major earthquake. My thoughts go out to his wife, Robyn, and his daughters, Nicole and Sarah, whom he adored. He will be missed.”
Bernson’s legacy was his no-nonsense approach as well as the landmark work he did in getting Los Angeles ready for “the Big One” — long before the 1994 Northridge temblor made the point for him with devastating results.
“The people of Los Angeles who don’t get killed in earthquakes in the next 100 years will largely have Hal to thank,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a former City Councilman, said then.
Bernson claimed to remember sitting in his high chair as an infant and shaking during the 1933 earthquake that left Long Beach in shambles, in the days before reinforced masonry.
Former LA Councilman and colleague @HalBernson & Robyn Bernson honored by PorterRanch YMCA for efforts to build this great facility. Well deserved, Hal. Good to see his successors there, GregSmith and @MitchEnglander. pic.twitter.com/oscfBg7cYc
— Zev Yaroslavsky (@ZevYaroslavsky) March 5, 2018
As a relatively young member of the council, some years after the 1971 Sylmar quake, Bernson pushed for retrofitting thousands of the city’s oldest buildings. Seismic safety wasn’t popular in those days, but it paid off handsomely in Northridge, which just happened to be in his district.
Yaroslavsky said Tuesday that this politically difficult feat became his “big legacy.”
“The city had been around for 200 years, and we never had those types of orders before,” he said. “He was determined to inoculate the city against the dangers of seismic activity.”
“He is really a classical public servant,” Yaroslavsky said. “He didn’t need to do it. He didn’t need to do it for a living. And then he dove into it headfirst and and really made a difference.”
While on the City Council, Bernson said he would always be proudest of his efforts that changed the city’s building codes to make buildings more durable.
“I remember the Sylmar Earthquake, where landlords had to tear down their buildings and people were given eviction notices,” Bernson said. “Then, after the Northridge Earthquake, how little of that we had. How the devastation could have been much worse and then you think you did a good job for the city.”
Bernson came to City Hall at the height of the anti-tax fervor of Proposition 13, convinced by friends to run for the office being vacated by former Councilman Bob Wilkinson.
Former City Councilman Greig Smith, who served as Bernson’s chief of staff for 23 of the years he was in office, said he had known Bernson when they both owned clothing shops in the northwest San Fernando Valley.
Smith recalled that Bernson came to him one day, and said, “Hey, I think I’m gonna run for City Council.”
Smith at first was incredulous and asked, “Are you crazy?”
But Bernson explained that he looked around and felt there was “nobody good running.”
Smith said he got involved with Bernson’s campaign, and they beat out a candidate that was thought to be the favorite at the time.
Although it seemed that Bernson may have come out of nowhere, he was already politically active, had been close to the incumbent Wilkinson, and was involved in the business community of the area at the time, running with an influential group that met monthly to chat with local electeds.
“It was unofficial, but it was very powerful,” Smith said of the group, which was called the Valley Breakfast Forum. They often met at a restaurant at the Van Nuys Airport, he said.
As a member of the local commission on redevelopment, Bernson was a critic of efforts to redevelop property — which had the aim of using development projects to revive blighted areas. This meant he often butted heads with Mayor Tom Bradley and others. Smith credited Bernson with putting restrictions in place that set the bar higher for being able to take over private property to be used for redevelopment projects.
Smith also said that Bernson was shy about holding press conferences to promote his accomplishments, including his efforts to restrict rent increases for residents of mobile and manufactured homes.
He said Bernson learned from constituents who lived in mobile homes in Chatsworth that they would not be covered by the city’s rent stabilization regulations. Their rents had been going up by 15% to 20% each year, and so he fought to include them in the city’s rent stabilization law.
Bernson served on the City Council from 1979 until he was forced to retire in 2003 due to term limits.
He was often praised for his service on the boards of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Southern California Associations of Governments and the Metrolink rail service.
He was also known at times for his tough, often stubborn persona — a demeanor that often aided in bringing home the bacon for his council district.
“He represented his district. He fought for his district,” said Los Angeles Daily News columnist Dennis McCarthy, who as a reporter crossed paths with the councilman. “He got what they thought they needed.”
Not at all ready to retire, Bernson called term limits “terrible” as he left office at age 72.
“I think it deprives the public of talented people,” he told the Daily News in 2003. “All you get are people who are looking to advance in politics. Not to say the people here now aren’t talented, you just don’t get the consistency of people who know the system.”
Bernson, who served 24 years at City Hall, left office at the same time as longtime councilmembers Ruth Galanter and Nate Holden, each with 16 years, all of them forced out by term limits.
Galanter said Tuesday that she was part of a wave of new members who came of age during the 1960s, during a time of changes and protest. There was a culture shift happening, with Bernson was part of an older generation, who identified more with the 1950s. But he was someone who transcended that gap, she said.
She added that Bernson was “part of an era where he ran for local government before term limits … so once you got elected, you didn’t have to instantly think about going somewhere else.”
“But he was one of the people who got elected to local government because he wanted to deal with local issues, and that’s what he did,” she said.
Upon his retirement, Bernson said he had flirted with other political possibilities in the past — such as running for Congress in the 1970s or for lieutenant governor. But instead, he stated at home in the Valley.
“I decided I’d rather stay here,” Bernson said. `”All politics is local.”
Further details about his death, and about memorial services, were not immediately available.
Elizabeth Chou, Ryan Carter and City News Service contributed to this report
