Charter Panel Appoints New Administrator

Frustrated by an inability to speedily accomplish routine housekeeping chores, ranging from getting quick access to donated offices to obtaining voice mail for its members, the elected Los Angeles Charter Commission has hired an administrator to replace a lawyer as its executive director.

Municipal law specialist C. Edward Dilkes resigned as executive director Tuesday night after a number of commissioners privately expressed disappointment over his administrative abilities.

Geoffrey Garfield, a former assistant deputy mayor for public safety in the Riordan administration and communications director for the Police Protective League, was hired in his place.

Dilkes, a charter aficionado whose law firm supplies city attorney services for 31 Southern California cities, will remain as special counsel to the Charter Commission, available to work up to 40 hours per month to help draft a new charter, commissioners said.

USC political scientist and associate dean H. Eric Schockman, who was the commission’s first choice for the director’s job but turned it down because it would have taken too much time away from his university duties, also has agreed to donate 15 hours per week to serve as the commission’s policy coordinator.

He will help commissioners frame and answer a variety of public policy questions in coming months, as they seek to draft a new charter to submit to city voters in 1999.

Declaring that the commissioners, who were elected last summer, have “made an extraordinary amount of progress in a very short period of time,” Dilkes said Wednesday that he remains “literally delighted to serve them in any capacity that helps.”

He said legal draftsmanship “was always what I thought my greatest strength was and I think that was what the commission thought it was.”

Dilkes said he had found it “very difficult . . . to disengage myself from my law practice, and working as special counsel really permits me to mix the existing law practice and service to the commission in a more functional way.”