Critics Stay in Shadows, Still Fearful of Cunliffe

She has been called the Queen of Vindictiveness and the Little Empress by City Hall critics--but they do so behind her back, telling much about the lingering influence and power of Sylvia Cunliffe.

Even as Cunliffe finds her job further endangered as chief of the Los Angeles Department of General Services, those who would gladly see her leave remain unconvinced that they have seen the last of Sylvia.

“I have seen her fight back before, and I’m not counting her out yet,” said one department official after Mayor Tom Bradley announced Tuesday that he would seek to fire his appointee.

Since the General Services Department was formed in 1979 as an amalgam of several other city agencies, Cunliffe has been its lone general manager. As head of a department with 1,700 employees and a $127-million budget, she has been the leader of the city’s fourth-largest department.

Cunliffe’s stature as one of the city’s most influential bureaucrats stemmed not only from the sheer size of her department; it also derived from the way she wielded its enormous inventory. Even elected officials, including the 15-member City Council, relied on Cunliffe and her staff for essentials ranging from office supplies and telephones to automobiles and office space.

Also, Cunliffe has helped council members with their special projects, including music festivals in their districts. And she could either hinder or help any request with a simple word to her staff--a practice that some felt she used often.

“For a long time, she was an untouchable around here,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, one of her most vocal critics on the council.

The 54-year-old Cunliffe built a reputation on political survival, which helped her win her present job in 1979, and which now pays $90,243 a year. Over a 30-year career, she has risen from a first job as junior administrative assistant in the Bureau of Engineering.

With a cloud over the Cunliffe name, events such as the Los Angeles Street Scene Festival, which she once ran, are also threatened. Street Scene was postponed this year over questions regarding Cunliffe’s supervision. Its future remains in doubt.

The mayor, who once praised her as the “best-equipped to move the administration of that department quickly and efficiently,” has abandoned her. And Cunliffe, whose beehive hair style and flair for false eyelashes and flashy clothes were a common sight at City Hall, has not been seen by co-workers since she was placed on forced leave of absence last June.

During an interview this summer, Cunliffe defended herself from the accusations of nepotism, favoritism and mismanagement and said she was wounded by the descriptions of her as a vindictive administrator with a volatile temper who ran her department like a personal empire.

“I am not a vindictive person,” she said. “I was as demanding as any good department head.”

Cunliffe added that she felt betrayed by the Bradley Administration and that she had been singled out by her political enemies at City Hall and promised to fight to retain her job.

Cunliffe did survive another controversy in 1972 when she was accused of influencing the appointment of three sisters and a half-brother to jobs in city anti-poverty programs. But the subject was dropped after her boss at the time, Board of Public Works President Howard W. Chappell, presented records that he said cleared her.

Winning this time is already proving more difficult in a case that eventually may wind up in the courts.

In a surprise move Monday, Cunliffe jettisoned her attorney, Godfrey Isaac, who once represented another celebrated civil servant fighting to save his job--former Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner Thomas Noguchi. Noguchi eventually was forced out.

But it was in keeping with Cunliffe’s determination to run her own defense. Two months earlier, when she decided to file a workers compensation claim with the city, Isaac found out only after reporters asked him about it.

In the interview, Cunliffe insisted that she has few regrets about her performance. But she said her husband, Heber Cunliffe, a senior structural engineer with the Department of Building and Safety, and her family have suffered from her experience.

“I gave too much of myself for this job,” she said, “That’s my regret.