21 Facts About Hal Bernson

Harold M Bernson was an American politician who was a member of the Los Angeles City Council for 24 years, from 1979 until his retirement in 2003.

Hal Bernson grew up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, where he became a bar mitzvah at the historic Breed Street Shul.

Hal Bernson recalled that at the age of ten he attended services at the synagogue three times a day to recite a mourner's prayer for his father.

Hal Bernson moved back to Los Angeles in 1956 and to the San Fernando Valley in 1958.

Hal Bernson was dubbed "Mister Earthquake," for his driven attitude toward making city building safe in the event of temblors.

Hal Bernson took an interest in seismic safety and decided to back the proposal, warding off angry building owners and others.

Hal Bernson helped organize the city's first international earthquake conference, attended by 28 countries.

Hal Bernson developed a quake safety booklet for children and help create the "Quakey-Shakey Van," a vehicle that helped teach children about quake safety.

Nevertheless, Hal Bernson refused aid from the Community Redevelopment Agency in rebuilding damage in his district from the 1994 Northridge earthquake on the grounds that the agency was trying to foist "social engineering" off on the area.

Hal Bernson served on the boards of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Southern California Regional Rail Authority.

Mayor Tom Bradley announced in December 1989 that he and Hal Bernson had reached a compromise on the Porter Ranch project in Chatsworth, the biggest single development project in Los Angeles history.

Hal Bernson called the proposal the "hottest issue around"" and said the current school system was "a farce.

The city's Ethics Commission found in 1994 that Hal Bernson had failed to disclose the source of $11,000 in campaign contributions made by a private company and ordered him to repay the funds.

In 1997 Hal Bernson ended a two-year battle with the Ethics Commission by paying a $1,500 fine levied against him for spending $1,140 in officeholder account funds to buy season tickets to the Hollywood Bowl.

Three years later, the Ethics Commission and Bernson agreed that he would pay a $3,000 fine "for improperly accepting an excess amount of free legal services from the law firm of City Hall lobbyist Neil Papiano," who had represented Bernson in the Hollywood Bowl case.

Hal Bernson said the trips were proper and enabled him to do a better job as a councilman.

In 1992 he sued Browning-Ferris Industries, operator of the landfill, for libel, alleging that the company "leaked to news reporters a dossier containing false claims about Hal Bernson's spending of public and private funds on travel" in an attempt to discredit him.

Hal Bernson pushed a proposal through the City Council in 1985 that would have made it easier to evict some of the three thousand tenants in the crime-plagued, predominantly Latino Bryant Street-Vanalden Avenue neighborhood of Northridge, but backed off when Mayor Tom Bradley said he would veto it.

Hal Bernson was the only "no" vote in 1987 on a City Council offer of $10,000 for relocation assistance for Central American refugees allegedly threatened by El Salvador death squads.

Holleigh Hal Bernson, an "aspiring film director," was killed in a one-car traffic accident in October 1995 when she lost control of her car in a night drive through Griffith Park and it went off the road.

Hal Bernson died on the night of July 20,2020, at the age of 89.