Board games

THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE in Los Angeles who actually understand what the city’s dozens of boards and commissions are up to could probably fit into one of the smaller lounges at LAX -- and those who know what these boards should be up to could probably fit onto one of those airport shuttle buses.

Yet these commissions, run by small groups of mayoral appointees, oversee not just LAX but other multibillion-dollar enterprises at the city’s harbor and its water and power company, as well as city functions such as police, public works and so on. If people know the commissions at all, it is mostly as the centers of a couple of juicy scandals during former Mayor James K. Hahn’s administration, scandals that helped make him a one-term mayor.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is now appointing his own commissioners, whose names and backgrounds are announced and often forgotten. Our advice: Watch what they do, not who they are. If these volunteer commissioners grasp the power that the City Charter and the mayor’s authority afford them, and that Villaraigosa is urging them to exercise, they can improve the city’s daily life, economic health and self-image.

Everyone who lives within a few miles of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, for instance, breathes the diesel-fueled and cancer-causing particle pollution that spews from idling cargo ships. Near the start of his term four years ago, Hahn promised to reduce this pollution by persuading shippers to turn off their diesel engines and hook up to the city’s electric grid while in port.

The plan hasn’t yet come to fruition.

The harbor commission could have approved deals in 2004 with a pair of shipping companies that promised an 80% reduction in their port emissions, but the bidding was inexplicably and abruptly canceled -- and reopened at lower standards. Some made the obvious suggestion that the deal unraveled because a company with links to Hahn couldn’t meet the 80% standard.

Villaraigosa and the new harbor commissioners he named Wednesday should make fulfilling Hahn’s unmet promise their first duty, along with getting a grip on the causes and cures of falling revenues at the port and the uneven spending of port funds on civic waterfront beautification.

A pair of independent studies over the last four years has found the so-called proprietary commissions -- the ones that make money, award big contracts and create jobs -- to be overly political and unable or unwilling to do the hands-on managing that the City Charter asks of them. City Controller Laura Chick (who has conducted critical performance audits of most city departments) says the commissions have not operated properly for decades. Her audits found that some commissions seemed not to understand their own legal responsibilities to set fiscal and management policies.

Their focus over the years shifted to wheeling and dealing.

Former airport commissioners Ted Stein and Leland Wong, for instance, were under fire during Hahn’s term, accused of awarding contracts at Los Angeles International Airport to some of Hahn’s biggest political contributors. Criminal investigations into such “pay-to-play” accusations continue.

Aside from issues of right and wrong, the contract mania was a distraction from the task of making the airports safer and more efficient.

Though airport commissioners can’t on their own carry out a larger planned overhaul at LAX, they could and should press specific projects: In addition to rebuilding the crumbling Tom Bradley International Terminal, they should work to make security more effective and less onerous. They also should press for a safety-related move of the airport’s south runway (which also would have the benefit of preparing LAX for the new super-jumbo jets expected in the next few years).

Meanwhile, the appointed board that is supposed to manage the Department of Water and Power failed in the last few years to carry out court-mandated water restorations in the Owens Valley. It approved scandalous outside public relations contracts that blossomed later into criminal indictments.

In the meantime, the DWP lags behind the rest of the state in producing “green power,” despite a costly PR campaign aimed at giving it a green makeover. The agency, which was the city’s jewel when it promoted conservation and avoided the blackouts that hit privatized power companies in 2001, has become a civic embarrassment.

The mayor is ultimately accountable for what his volunteer commissioners do -- or fail to do -- and they are not independent of his guidance. Villaraigosa has demanded ethics pledges from his commissioners and banned lobbyists, which is commendable, but the goal is higher than simply avoiding scandal. The commissioners should be involved, in partnership with the mayor, in hiring and firing general managers. They should set and enforce specific goals without micromanaging.

By acting more like boards of directors than political organizations, these commissions would create more jobs, provide more efficient services and help make a cleaner environment. In short, truly civic-minded commissioners could help make Los Angeles a better city.