Bigger Ideas for the Runoff

In a fog-delayed ballot count, Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa appeared late Tuesday night to be heading for the May 17 mayoral runoff, judging from exit polls and a growing lead in reported returns. Whether the runoff will put him in a rematch against Mayor James K. Hahn, to whom he lost in the last mayoral runoff, or a race with challenger Bob Hertzberg was uncertain as ballots trickled in. One message, however, seemed clear. Voters -- at least what few turned out -- wanted change.

Imagine how many voters might have gone to the polls if they believed that the mayor of Los Angeles could change things, could fix the problems Angelenos complain about every day. Like traffic. Schools. And the issue that many, rightly or wrongly, see as linked to all others -- illegal immigration.

Most of these, strictly speaking, do not fall under the mayor’s direct control. Crime does, and in this campaign virtually every candidate pledged to find money in the budget for hiring additional police officers. Voters should hold the runoff candidates to that promise. But money for road construction and public transportation comes from lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington, and both have gotten stingier under the strain of their own budget woes.

The L.A. Unified School District is governed by an independently elected board, and judging by the turnout on Tuesday in that election, voters don’t have much faith in it either to fix the schools. And the federal government is responsible for controlling, or failing to control, the nation’s borders.

Is the mayor’s office, then, irrelevant when it comes to these key issues that residents confront every day? Villaraigosa and his runoff opponent have two months to convince voters it is not.

Traffic

Residents are getting so fed up with gridlock that even those who once adamantly opposed spending on subways and light rail, particularly on routes through their neighborhoods, seem willing to reconsider. A mayor should seize the moment to press Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) to work for reversal of a law that prohibits using federal money for extending the Red Line subway down Wilshire Boulevard. A mayor should also persuade voters to override a ban on using local sales taxes on subways and galvanize riders’ support against the inevitable NIMBYs.

Other, smaller fixes are possible -- and cumulative.

After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, then-Mayor Richard Riordan addressed the crisis of damaged freeways by restricting on-street parking, promoting carpool lanes and pressing businesses to alter work hours and allow telecommuting. Today’s crisis is gridlock, and it demands an equally vigorous response.

Put the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on a 24/7 schedule. Most terminals now operate between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays, pitting commuters against big-rig trucks on the 710 Freeway and backing up ships in the harbor. It’s absurd for one of the world’s busiest ports to keep bankers’ hours, and a forceful mayor should get terminal operators, longshore workers, truckers and distribution warehouses to recognize this. To date, efforts to launch even a pilot expanded-hours project have failed.

In the 2001 mayoral campaign, then-candidate Steve Soboroff recommended reversible one-way streets in areas where rush-hour traffic overwhelmingly flows in one direction. It’s still an idea worth exploring. In fact, everything should be on the table, including charging tolls on heavily congested roads during peak times or allowing solo motorists to pay a hefty premium to drive in carpool lanes.

A persuasive, energetic mayor can also help lighten gridlock by promoting a vision of neighborhoods in which jobs, homes, shops, parks and schools are closer together.

Schools

Hertzberg campaigned on a vague promise to break up the LAUSD and an equally vague plan for the city to take over jurisdiction. Both would require state legislation and a herculean struggle against teachers union opposition. Hertzberg is right, however, in that schools are key to every city goal, from reducing crime to attracting jobs. Los Angeles has plenty of people with ideas on how schools could be better, including a billionaire philanthropist who believes that well-trained principals are the key and a group that wants to recast schools as neighborhood community centers.

What it lacks is a mayor with the authority to bring the ideas and the schools together, like New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who persuaded the New York Legislature to pass a law allowing him to appoint eight of the 13 members of an expanded school board. The question voters should ask of Villaraigosa, who got his start as a teachers union organizer, is whether he would be too beholden to press for such a change, or whether he is just the person to convince the powerful union how desperately change is needed.

Immigration

Many Angelenos blame crowded roads, crowded schools and just about everything else that’s wrong with their city on illegal immigrants. They want a mayor to make life harder on the undocumented than it already is by denying services that mayors don’t control anyway, like healthcare and driver’s licenses. It’s not surprising that candidates avoid this hot-button topic. A mayor can’t close the city’s borders, much less the nation’s. But he can at least lead polarized residents in an honest conversation about immigration’s effects, good and bad.

That means promoting the small, immigrant-owned businesses that have revitalized Los Angeles’ economy. It also means rallying fellow mayors to press the federal government for more rational immigration policies and more federal aid in cases where those policies fail. As with traffic and schools, there are no easy answers. But there will be no answers at all without the leadership to ask the questions.