L.A. Charter Reform Panels: Two Is One Too Many

How many Los Angeles voters have been puzzled if not exasperated by being asked to make decisions on an endless series of minute changes in the city charter? Examples: Can retired LAPD officers who are recalled to active duty retain their pensions? Should the Board of Animal Regulation Commissioners have authority over the Department of Animal Regulation? Should the surviving spouses of firefighters and police officers be allowed to keep their pensions if they remarry?

These are among the dozens of such measures that Angelenos have faced in the ballot booth in recent years. The voters approved these three and most of the others put before them. But has the city government run more efficiently as a result? Do residents feel connected to their city government? Well-served?

Hardly. That’s why real charter reform--a systematic review of the entire 71-year-old, 680-page document--is a priority. Now, after years of talk by City Council members and the mayor but no action toward a review of the city’s charter, we may see two competing reform commissions operating in parallel. This makes little sense: It would all but guarantee that no real reform of the city’s cumbersome governance structure would take place. There is still a chance to avoid this debacle if the mayor and the council cooperate, something they seem loath to do.

The focus on charter reform springs from the endless cat-and-dog fight between Mayor Richard Riordan and the council. At issue is power. Riordan and his allies think a mayor should have more executive power than the current charter grants. With that and other goals in mind, Riordan launched an initiative drive last year seeking direct election of a 15-member reform commission that would put its recommendations directly to the voters for approval. The mayor’s proposal qualified, and last week the council reluctantly put the measure on the April 8 ballot, at the direction of a federal judge.

Not surprisingly, the council, which has a strong grip on power when its 15 members can agree, is reluctant to relinquish any of it. While some members see the charter’s structural weaknesses, other contend that the problems are minor, that tinkering at the edges--those tiny charter changes that appear on the ballots--will remove any obstacles to efficient operation. So the council, in large measure to blunt Riordan’s initiative drive, convened its own reform commission last year. The recommendations of this 21-member group, already at work, will go back to the council, which can kill them or put them before the voters.

If voters approve the Riordan-backed initiative to form a so-called citizens reform panel and elect commissioners in districtwide balloting, that group would get down to work by early summer. Then the two commissions would be operating simultaneously, each with a two-year limit on consultations.

Despite the heat of this struggle, the structural problems with the city charter are neither as grievous as the mayor believes nor as trivial as some members of the council contend. Clearly the charter, with oversight spread among commissions, departments and council committees, gives managers no incentive to cooperate with one another, take up new initiatives or streamline their own operations. No one really has the authority to hire more police officers, restructure garbage collection or tree trimming or eliminate deficits.

The quickest route to substantive charter reform would be resolving the existing procedural tangle. Farsighted members of both the mayor’s and the council’s camps know that a single commission is the answer and are exploring merging the two if the Riordan initiative passes. That direction makes sense and would send an important signal to the public about the seriousness of this effort. Voters must ultimately approve all changes proposed by any panel. But there is little chance they will do so unless they see this reform enterprise as something more than just another skirmish in City Hall’s political wars.