NEWS ANALYSIS : Rebuild L.A. Struggles to Establish Its Role

At Rebuild L.A.’s second board meeting recently, Los Angeles School Board President Leticia Quezada urged the organization to take a stand against a possible teachers strike.

Her emotional request added yet another potentially thorny issue to Rebuild L.A.’s full plate--one already laden with pleas that it bring jobs back to the inner city, end redlining by banks and insurance companies, speed the rebuilding of burned-out stores and ease the city’s racial tensions.

“Some people think RLA is supposed to cure all the evils in the world,” said board member Dan Garcia, a Warner Bros. executive.

With so many people expecting so much, Rebuild L.A.’s leaders often feel compelled to devote public remarks to explaining what the organization is not.

“RLA is not a bank, a government agency, a credit union, a political organization, a philanthropic organization, an employment agency, the lottery or the only rebuilding effort in town,” Rebuild L.A. Co-Chairman Bernard W. Kinsey said.

What the group is is less clear.

Six months after its founding, Rebuild L.A. seems to be a mix of four basic elements. Co-Chairman Peter V. Ueberroth barnstorms the country trying to lure big companies to invest in the inner city. A staff of 50 tries to consummate deals that companies or community organizations bring through the door. About 800 volunteers work on task forces grappling with issues ranging from the lack of insurance in the inner city to the absence of racial harmony in Los Angeles.

And there is a board of 80 members, many of whom are still unclear about their role.

“We are a resource, a facilitator, a broker and a counselor,” Rebuild L.A. spokesman Fred MacFarlane said.

But those terms mean different things to different people.

“From its inception, there has been a misunderstanding of the extent to which Rebuild L.A. would be the universal resource for any sort of physical rebuilding or community rebuilding effort,” said Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, western regional director of the American Jewish Committee, who just joined the nonprofit group’s board.

“RLA is set up to revitalize the inner city in an overall sense,” Greenebaum added, “but it is not and probably cannot concern itself with solving individual problems.”

Ueberroth, Kinsey and Co-Chairman Barry A. Sanders have said repeatedly that the organization’s primary purpose is to spur the private sector to make meaningful, sustainable investments in the inner city. Five years from now, they say, South-Central Los Angeles should begin to resemble Woodland Hills in the range of opportunities and services that are available.

But school board chief Quezada is hardly alone in encouraging Rebuild L.A. to engage in different kinds of undertakings. Korean-Americans want the group to provide immediate assistance for merchants whose shops burned. Women’s organizations say it should focus on child care as a prerequisite for successful job training in the inner city.

There seem to be two primary reasons why people are looking to Rebuild L.A. to solve problems that it may not be able to handle.

The first, according to several board members, is a lack of leadership from government--and, consequently, a lack of faith in government’s ability to help.

“Because there has been no government entity willing to take on the riot aftermath, by default it has been put on RLA,” said Bong Hwan Kim, executive director of the Korean Youth Center, who recently joined the group’s board. “They’re having to cope with all these other issues, and the issues are overwhelming.”

“I think there’s a feeling that people don’t know where to go and to some real extent they don’t trust the existing institutions,” Greenebaum said. “They hope RLA is a one-stop place to go to solve problems.”

The second reason, Greenebaum said, is that Rebuild L.A. has defined itself more broadly than it was conceived. It has created task forces on issues such as health, human services, racial harmony and education.

“We’re still trying to figure out what we are,” said Dennis A. Collins, president of the Irvine Foundation, who chairs Rebuild L.A.’s philanthropy task force.

At last Wednesday’s board meeting, Rebuild L.A. did not take a stand on the school strike or on the wave of racial unrest at several schools. According to members, Ueberroth advised the board--in a closed session--that if members felt compelled to act immediately on school issues, they should convene a task force meeting and come up with a plan of action.

“This is your board,” Ueberroth reportedly said. In essence, he told them: Look to yourselves. I’m not going to solve all the problems of the city.

At another point in the more than three-hour meeting, Ueberroth told the board that it was not Rebuild L.A.’s role to reconstruct stores burned down in the riots.

But during the closed session, several board members said that the group needs to deal with the problems of those whose businesses were destroyed because many victims have not received government assistance and there are long-term consequences to inaction.

Prime among them, said USC President Steven B. Sample, a board member, is the loss of jobs in the “neglected areas” where Rebuild L.A. says it is attempting to bring jobs.

At a minimum, Kim said, the organization should find a way to link up needy, victimized small business owners “with the impressive array of private sector resources they seem to have a pipeline to.”

Indeed, at last week’s meeting, Ueberroth said that more than 500 companies in the United States, Europe and Japan are developing plans to invest more than $1 billion in Los Angeles’ riot-torn inner city over the next few years.

Ueberroth trumpeted the figures as a rebuttal to criticism that Rebuild L.A. is floundering.

“Have we lost the momentum? It is growing so substantially every day that it is challenging our ability to handle it,” said Ueberroth, who, like his co-chairs, is spending 16 to 18 hours a day on the job.

Ueberroth released a list of about 70 of the 500 companies, but offered no details of their plans--an omission some board members found troubling.

“I’d like to see a paragraph on each of those companies that describes what they say they’ve committed to,” said one member, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If they don’t tell all of us about projects that are on the drawing board, then it’s not as easy for us to help.”

Similarly, Collins said, Rebuild L.A. has not made it clear how community groups and others can team up with the organization.

“People don’t know where the entry point is,” he said. “I’m sure our task force is guilty of this, too--that there are people who want to communicate with us and haven’t been able to.”

Ten task force leaders gave reports at last week’s meeting on their work to date.

Collins said the philanthropy task force will focus on two areas: helping nonprofit organizations that have been toiling in the neglected areas and working with the finance task force to launch a community development bank.

The construction task force was among the first to get started. Co-Chairman David Black, an executive with Swinerton & Walberg contractors, said the panel’s goal is to maximize the involvement of Los Angeles’ neglected communities in construction during the rebuilding process and beyond.

Besides a program to provide mentors for minority contractors, the task force plans a “stamp of approval” program to single out projects that meet goals for minority participation. The endorsement would provide an incentive to the private sector to meet the goals, Black said.

Warner Bros.’ Garcia said the urban planning task force is working on a range of issues, including the environment, housing, land use and transportation.

For Rebuild L.A. to succeed, board members say, its leaders need to clarify the relationship between the task forces and the organization’s staff.

“We hear all the time that the task forces are the centerpiece of RLA’s work, but then we hear about all this stuff that is going forward by staff unilaterally,” Collins said.

More broadly, Rebuild L.A. must define its relationship to community groups, Kim added.

“The question is: How does RLA integrate its efforts with the grass-roots constituencies that are affected?” the Korean-American leader said. “Their starting point is more of a private-sector, top-down approach. If we can reach a good balance, we’ll have a winning approach.”

Task Forces for Rebuild L.A. Here is a list of Rebuild L.A. task forces, including the names of staff liaisons and the panels’ chairmen and chairwomen. For information, call (213) 489-9675.

Business Development and Assistance/Enterprise. Rebuild L.A. liaisons: Rocky Delgadillo, Archie Purvis, Joel Rubenstein. Chairman: to be named.

Construction. Rebuild L.A. liaison: Arnoldo Beltran. Chairmen: David Black, Swinerton & Walberg; William H. Sauerwald, Painters District Council No. 36.

Education/Training. Rebuild L.A. liaisons: Marcia Gonzales-Kimbrough and Richard McNish. Chairman: Philip L. Williams, Times Mirror Co.

Finance. Rebuild L.A. liaison: Rena Wheaton. Co-chairmen: Cody Press, Merrill Lynch; Tom Decker, Bank of America.

Health/Human Services/Youth. Rebuild L.A. liaison: Annie Cho. Co-chairs: Maria Contreras-Sweet, Seven-Up/Royal Crown Bottling Co. of Southern California; Hugh A. Jones, Kaiser Permanente; Dr. Robert Tranquada.

Insurance. Rebuild L.A. liaison: Al Osterloh. Co-chairs: Stephanie Patterson, RFP Insurance; Ray Bacon, retired state deputy insurance commissioner.

Media/Communications. Rebuild L.A. liaison: Fred MacFarlane. Co-chairs: Dennis Holt, Western International Media; Jo Muse, Muse Cordero Chen; Howard Neal, KFI/KOST; Betsy Berkheimer, Berkheimer Kline Golin Harris.

Philanthropy. Rebuild L.A. liaison: Jerry Arca. Chairman: Dennis Collins, James Irvine Foundation.

Racial Harmony and Discourse. Rebuild L.A. liaison: Jai Henderson. Co-chairs: Antonia Hernandez, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; Ki Suh Park, Gruen Associates; Police Chief Willie L. Williams.

Urban Planning (Environment, Housing, Land Use, Transportation). Rebuild L.A. liaison: Jackie Dupont Walker. Co-chairs: Ed Avila, Community Redevelopment Agency; Felicia Marcus, Board of Public Works; Steven Sample, USC; Jackie Tatum, Department of Recreation and Parks.

Volunteers. Rebuild L.A. liaisons: Rick Ellison and Jimetta Moore. Chairman: Bruce Corwin, Metropolitan Theaters Corp.