Riordan’s Charter Panel Left in Limbo

A labor-dominated commission elected two months ago to rewrite Los Angeles’ City Charter has been caught in a political and financial tug of war between Mayor Richard Riordan and the City Council, leaving the panel nearly paralyzed--and so broke it cannot even afford to pay an executive director. The multimillionaire mayor, who funded the campaign to create the commission, was disappointed when labor-backed candidates won control and has not delivered on his promise to see that it gets $300,000 from private sources.

Although someone close to the mayor says he has raised the full amount, Riordan has delivered a check for only $30,000, prompting one labor-backed commissioner, Janice Hahn, to accuse the mayor of using the money to “hold the commission hostage” and to “extort” cooperation in its choice of an executive director.

Hahn said that the council--Riordan’s nemesis in his struggle to increase mayoral power under a new charter--has also used the promise of money in an attempt to influence the commission.

Their tug of war--a lesson in just how diffuse power is under the current charter--initially concerned whether former Democratic Assemblyman Mike Roos should be the panel’s executive director.

Riordan made no secret of his desire to see Roos, once a top aide to former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and now director of the LEARN education reform group, installed in the post. In an effort to smooth the way for Roos, Riordan reached out to organized labor, managing to obtain the personal agreement of Los Angeles’ top labor leader that Roos seemed acceptable. But when Roos became widely known as the mayor’s choice, big problems arose in the City Council.

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Council President John Ferraro sent a proposal to perhaps spend more than $1 million in public money to not just one committee, but two--a move that critics say is tantamount to killing it, but which a Ferraro aide described as normal. Hearings are forthcoming, and “it certainly wasn’t killing anything,” the aide said.

Then Hahn said that a city employee with close ties to the council gave her a clear message: “The word was they weren’t interested in funding us if we picked the mayor’s choice.”

Late last week, Roos, who had not even applied for the job, told the commission that he was not interested.

After interviewing six finalists in a closed-door meeting Monday night, the commission reached a consensus near midnight that it should offer the post to USC Associate Dean H. Eric Schockman, a political scientist who has served as a top administrator and consultant to the Assembly and the council and who has written about the charter, sources said.

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A contract remains to be negotiated and the question of how Schockman will be paid remains unresolved.

The council, which must by law decide whether to accept substantial donations that pay for city business, declined Tuesday morning to immediately accept the $30,000 Riordan had raised--leaving the commission penniless.

The council delayed a vote on the matter for a week until Riordan provides more information on the source of the funds. The source has been identified so far only as the nonprofit Fund for Better Los Angeles Government.

City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said, “I want to know whose money I’m voting to accept.”

Word of the delay angered Riordan’s closest political confidant, William Wardlaw. Accusing the council of trying to kill charter reform, Wardlaw charged that the delay in accepting money Riordan raised “has nothing to do with disclosure. This has everything to do with the petulant attitude of the City Council because the people of Los Angeles want a new charter and they don’t,” Wardlaw said. “There is nothing they won’t do to thwart the will of the people, and they should be embarrassed and ashamed.”

He declined to comment on whether the mayor was attempting to extort cooperation from the commission. But Riordan chief of staff Robin Kramer dismissed the allegation as preposterous.

Ferraro’s staff said he could not be reached for comment.

Galanter said: “I meant what I said about disclosure. If it’s important for the people of Los Angeles to know who gives money to the people they vote for, it’s equally important to know who is putting up the money for Mr. Riordan’s charter commission.

“In announcing that he had to have his own charter commission, Mr. Riordan also announced that he was going to fund it,” she said.

Commissioner Chet Widom, an architect, reflected on the commission’s frustrations. Of the council, he said: “They won’t give us money. We are elected officials and yet when money is coming in . . . with no strings . . . they won’t let us take it.”

The council has created its own charter reform panel and appropriated $1.6 million to fund it. This panel, appointed last November, hired Cal State Fullerton political scientist Raphael Sonenshein as executive director in March and is hard at work.

A key structural difference between the elected and appointed commissions is who gets to approve their work.

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Charter reform proposals made by the appointed panel must be approved by the council, then submitted to voters. The elected panel’s proposals go directly to voters.

Riordan financed a $2-million drive to create the elected panel and backed candidates such as Widom for it in part because he believes the council will never allow voters to pass judgment on any proposal that reins in the council’s vast administrative powers.

But Riordan’s slate did poorly in contests with candidates endorsed and funded to the tune of nearly half a million dollars by the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. The labor slate was organized primarily to protect the provisions on Civil Service, pensions and the contracting out of city work that are written into the city’s 700-page charter.

Miguel Contreras, the labor federation’s executive secretary-treasurer, said he has been very disappointed in the inability of the elected commission to move ahead.

“Two months have gone by. You have no money, no staff, no executive director,” he told the commission at its meeting Monday night. “We expected a lot more leadership,” he said, conceding, “It’s not entirely your fault. Apparently the City Council took a DNA test and found out you were not their baby.”

In an interview, Contreras said it is obvious that “the mayor is dangling funds and the council is dangling funds, waiting to see who is the executive director.”

Contreras also shed light on how organized labor and the mayor came to an understanding on Roos.

Contreras said he received a call from a high-ranking Riordan staffer saying the mayor wanted someone like Roos as executive director of the reform commission. “The mayor and I had an understanding that [the county federation] would look at Roos,” Contreras said. But Contreras said he did not communicate his views to other union leaders because Roos would have had to impress them in interviews that he was not just Riordan’s man before “a signal” could be sent to the commission.

Roos withdrew before interviews were arranged.