>From an economic standpoint, Mitzna is more of a pro-business ideologue than even a good portion of the Likud faction.
Bryan
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Mitzna's relationship with Ze'evi is somewhat complicated and invites curiosity; he has a penchant for hiring aides and advisers with senior military ranks (his aides are sometimes referred to collectively as "the junta"); and he's a centralist with a reputation for being arrogant and aloof. Take, for example, the way in which the monthly Haifa city council meetings are run. Mitzna sits at the head of the table, presiding over the assembly of 30 council members, 25 of whom are members of his coalition. Mitzna controls the microphones. At his request, a technician shuts off the microphones of council members whose comments are not to his liking.
The most problematic chapter in Mitzna's mayoral biography concerns his relationship with Gad Ze'evi. Last week, Ze'evi published an ad in the local Haifa paper congratulating Mitzna on his election as chairman of the Labor Party. Ze'evi's nephew, Yigal Ze'evi, was Mitzna's political aide. In 1996, Gad Ze'evi, together with a group of businessmen that included Uri Dori and Yaakov Engel, financed the "Haifa Adifa" ("Haifa is Better") promotional campaign, which indirectly served the political interests of the city's mayor.
Ze'evi gave, and he also received. In August 2000, long before Amram Mitzna ever thought that he might actually be running for prime minister one day, Yoram Gavison revealed in Ha'aretz that the Haifa Municipality was selling lands to Ze'evi at a loss.
"Mitzna, in his role as chairman of the local construction and planning commission, was ready to grant Ze'evi building rights that businesspeople in other cities could only dream about," Gavison wrote. "This included, among others, the Grand Canyon project and the David Yellin project, where the building rights were worth about $100 million. The Haifa Municipality also is not in any rush to collect the surcharges that Ze'evi owes it. It sometimes even exempts itself completely from this unpleasant task, even though it gave Ze'evi benefits worth enormous sums, and expressed a willingness to give him additional benefits worth even more."
Gavison revealed, for example, that in the case of the Grand Canyon mall - the large shopping center in the Yizra'eliya neighborhood, which was completed in 1999 and considered the flagship of Ze'evi's business interests in Haifa - the Haifa Municipality acquired land from the Israel Lands Administration valued according to a 1997 appraisal at NIS 5 million per dunam, but leased the land to Ze'evi at a price of just NIS 400,000 per dunam (or, per quarter-acre, in accordance with a 1979 appraisal). Ze'evi later changed the designated use of parts of the mall from office space to commercial space, but did not pay the resulting surcharges. Ze'evi also received from Mitzna retroactive approval for construction of four additional apartments in Migdalei Elisha and was not asked to pay a surcharge. Ze'evi also obtained extraordinarily generous building rights in Mercaz Hacarmel.
In the City Center project in Haifa's German Colony, Ze'evi received building rights that were expanded on the basis of his commitment to build offices and a hotel on the site. Ze'evi subsequently sought to convert the designation to office space alone. At a February 1999 meeting, the local construction and planning commission approved the use of 4,200 extra meters of office space and rented half of the area from Ze'evi.
Mitzna: "The entrepreneurs are the fuel that gets things moving. Ze'evi didn't receive anything. I use him more than he uses me. It's all nonsense. He didn't get any breaks."
Less well-known businesspeople were also treated warmly by Mitzna.
"There's no mayor like him in the country," says Yisrael Shotland, head of the Israeli Institute for Export and International Cooperation and a former chairman of the Haifa Industrialists Association (1997-2000). "Before there was a directive from the Interior Ministry prohibiting the granting of discounts on municipal taxes for industry, he tried to help us. There was a joint committee of the municipality and the industrialists that met and allotted discounts. There was a problem with the matter of signs - there's a tax on billboards, and he gave discounts on the tax and spread out the payments. Mitzna is certainly a man of principles, but it's possible to come to an understanding with him on everything."
Mitzna: "I did not give any discounts in municipal or other taxes or anything else. It's simply untrue. No such thing happened. I am very scrupulous about adhering to the law." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20021128/934369a3/attachment.htm>