What’s in Store for the City’s Departing Officials?

The revolving door is spinning at Los Angeles City Hall, where a crowd of appointed and elected officials -- including four City Council members -- is heading for the door.

Ethics Commission President Miriam Krinsky, who ruffled many feathers recently by accusing City Council members of delaying and watering down ethics reforms, ends her five-year term on the panel June 30, the same day she steps down as president of the County Bar Assn. Sanitation Bureau chief Judith Wilson, who played a central role in the city’s decision to expand Sunshine Canyon Landfill, and City Engineer Vitaly Troyan both said last week that they had decided to retire from their jobs this year.

While some of those departing will probably return to relative obscurity, others, including Councilman Nate Holden, have ideas for new careers that could keep them in the spotlight.

Holden’s possible post-council plans are already creating a stir in Pasadena, where city officials have begun discussions with Holden associates about helping to finance a housing development on land Holden owns on Marengo Avenue.

What has some people talking about the project is that it is tentatively proposed to involve $750,000 in city funding, according to city records. Holden’s son, Chris, sits on the Pasadena City Council.

“Anything Nate Holden does is likely to raise eyebrows,” said Brady Westwater, an urban planner with an office in Pasadena.

The other departing council members -- Hal Bernson, Ruth Galanter and Nick Pacheco -- will also probably stay active in civic affairs. Bernson and Galanter are considering consulting work, while Pacheco, an attorney, said he is probably going to hang up a shingle and go into private practice after he leaves office this month.

Recalling an Old Quote

Backers of a campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis from office are quoting an influential state official in offering a rationale for the effort. The official: Davis himself.

A full-page advertisement in the Sacramento Bee launching the nascent gubernatorial campaign of Rep. Darrell Issa begins with a quote from Davis, the guy Issa would like voters to recall and replace with himself.

“When an NFL coach has one losing season after another, he gets replaced. Period. End of story,” the ad quotes Davis from his “State of the State” address in January 1999.

“Davis made a mess of California and I’m going to work to clean it up,” proclaims Issa in the ad, paid for by Issa for Governor. The Vista-area Republican energized the tepid recall movement last month when he pledged to put up his own dough to help fund it -- nearly $500,000 so far.

In turn, Davis supporters are going on the attack against Issa. Democratic strategist Bob Mulholland put out an e-mail call last week for a 1972 Maserati to be used in a press conference to remind voters that Issa was indicted on charges of stealing such a car when he was 18, although the charges were later dismissed.

Issa’s arrival on the recall scene also hasn’t meshed all that well with the official recall effort, launched by Ted Costa of People’s Advocate. Costa is the only one who is legally able to submit signatures in support of the recall.

Issa’s folks want signatures gathered and counted this summer to qualify for a special election in November, which could cost $35 million. Costa believes taxpayers might be better off voting in March 2004, a date that makes Issa’s side nervous because it’s also a statewide primary when he presumably would already be on the ballot for reelection.

Boxer Stays on Offensive

Vice President Dick Cheney presides over the U.S. Senate now and then, but California’s Barbara Boxer persuaded her colleagues to approve unanimously a call for an accounting by the Bush administration if Aug. 31 rolls around and the government doesn’t end its sole-source contract to a subsidiary of Cheney’s old Halliburton Co.

Boxer said the no-bid, billion-plus contract awarded March 8 to Kellogg Branch & Root was “first explained as an emergency contract to extinguish oil fires,” but, with few fires to extinguish, it’s now being used to restart Iraq’s oil industry.

The amendment to the bill Boxer sponsored with Virginia Republican John Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, insists that the Defense Department show cause why the exclusive contract should continue, and do so every two months until there is a competitive contract.

Boxer has baled great political hay on military bidding and procurement: In 1984, she hit the headlines as a member of Congress, hammering on the Pentagon for buying $780 hammers, $7,622 coffee pots and the like. Don’t be surprised to see the Pentagon contract issue revived and updated in her 2004 reelection campaign.

White Suits the Season

Thermometers hit 99 degrees in downtown Sacramento last Monday, so at least a dozen members of the Assembly looked appropriately dressed when they showed up in crisp white suits.

Since 1997, the first Monday after Memorial Day has been “White Suit Day” in the Assembly.

The tradition started with former Assemblyman Larry Bowler, a Republican from Elk Grove, and Rod Wright, a Democrat who represented South Los Angeles until he was ousted by term limits last year.

“In a term-limited environment, you don’t have the opportunity for people to create relationships,” said Wright, who dropped by the Assembly chambers draped in lustrous ivory silk.

“It’s something that people do that is not ‘I’m a Democrat’ and ‘I’m a Republican.’ ”

Points Taken

* “Not your run-of-the-mill Hollywood fund-raiser” is how actress Mimi Kennedy’s e-mail characterizes her June 14 fund-raiser for presidential contender and Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich. True, presidential fund-raisers are rarely held in Van Nuys, where Kennedy lives, and anyone below voting age will keep busy doing chalk drawings on the driveway. The audience will occupy chairs on the lawn as Kucinich speaks from the porch, a la Republicans William McKinley and Warren G. Harding, both of whom won the White House with their “front-porch campaigns.”

* Concerned about low voter participation by minorities in California, the state Assembly approved a bill last week to require the state and counties to begin collecting racial data on voter registration cards. Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) introduced the legislation to identify registration levels for each racial group. The new bill comes as Ward Connerly is pushing for a state initiative to prohibit public agencies from gathering racial data on government forms.

* A little gentlemanly campaigning? The only vote that counts now is Gray Davis’. But supporters of the John Muir/Yosemite quarter, one of five finalists in the running to be the Golden State’s image of choice on the two-bit piece, have composed a three-fold die-cut mailer praising the Muir coin. Like well-behaved Miss America contestants, it also praises the other four coin-tenders, but a Muir-Yosemite quarter, it declares, “would be a bit of living history.”

Quotable Quote:

“We are going broke. Our system is not financially sustainable. We’ve got a judge who has decided to make herself ... health director for the county of Los Angeles, and the implications of that, if that decision should hold, are ominous.”

-- Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, venting frustration about a federal judge’s recent decision to block the closing of Rancho Los Amigos Hospital.

This week’s contributors include Michael Finnegan, Steven Herbert, Jean O. Pasco and Nancy Vogel. Patt Morrison is off this week.