A Old Hand Comes Back to City Hall

Mike Gage is back in City Hall, although his return has been so quiet you would hardly know it.

Gage, you recall, quit as Tom Bradley’s deputy mayor and chief of staff a few months ago to become a land development executive. Exhausted from the high pressure of directing Bradley’s defense in the investigation of the mayor’s outside business activities, he had become a walking temper tantrum, at war with the press and even some of his own staff.

But politics is an addiction. When the mayor called several weeks ago, Gage couldn’t say no. Bradley appointed him and environmentalist Dorothy Green, a leader of the save Santa Monica Bay movement, to the Board of Water and Power Commissioners.

Made up of part-time, relatively low-paid commissioners, the board oversees the Department of Water and Power, which brings water and electricity to the city. The board and the department are low visibility institutions, explaining why Gage’s return to municipal life has been so quiet. It’s hard to interest the press in the progress of water through pipes or electricity over power lines.

But that doesn’t diminish the importance of Gage and Green, or their role in the intensive cosmetic surgery the Bradley Administration is trying to perform on itself.

With the mayor staggered by his conflict-of-interest problems, Chief of Staff Mark Fabiani, Gage’s successor, has moved to revive the Bradley image. Fabiani concentrated on issues with powerful constituencies that have become alienated from Bradley.

One is planning and housing. Bradley is making well-publicized decisions in favor of middle- and upper-middle-class homeowners in some development fights while, in poorer neighborhoods, he has tried to improve an ineffective low-income housing construction program.

The second is the environment, which explains the appointment of Gage and Green to the Board of Water and Power Commissioners.

Southern California governments have imported water from hundreds of miles away to sustain the region’s huge population growth on this semi-arid coastal plane. In their building zeal, the water engineers generally dismiss environmentalists’ concerns about the loss of mountain lakes and streams.

Build, build, build has been the municipal motto. The Los Angeles Owens Valley aqueduct brought water from the eastern Sierra Nevada. Los Angeles and other entities created the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which built an aqueduct from the Colorado River to supply water to cities, suburbs and farms from Ventura County to San Diego County and to the Inland Empire of San Bernardino and Riverside counties. That supply was supplemented in the 1960s with water from Northern California.

Today, the water supply has become limited. Four years of drought have taken a toll. A growing population in Arizona needed more of the Colorado River. Growth in San Diego, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties put additional strains on the water district’s supply. And environmentalists won court decisions over the Department of Water and Power that reduced Owens Valley imports, arguing that Mono Lake was imperiled by Los Angeles’ thirst.

But the foot-dragging Department of Water and Power had resisted the new currents. That’s why a change in department policies would be a plus for the mayor.

I talked to Gage and Green recently about how they want to change the department.

Gage was calm and friendly. It was as if we had never exchanged insults. He was frank about the role he and Green will play.

“The mayor said he wanted the department seen as the environmental trend-setter for the ‘90s,” said Gage, who used to to be a river guide, “and he appointed two people who have that background.”

Gage wants tougher enforcement of a city water conservation law that requires water-saving devices for homes and businesses. Both he and Green want the department to do much more to recycle water that goes down the sewage drain, purifying it for use in irrigating golf courses and parks. The treated water should also be pumped into the ground, to replenish underground water supplies.

Gage is a tough political fighter--and a skilled political publicist. So is Green, as she proved during her long Santa Monica Bay fight. They’re capable of challenging the engineers.

That’s why Gage’s return to City Hall is important to Bradley. The Administration’s goal is to refurbish the Bradley image. Now in the shadows, Mike Gage is still trying to make that image a good one.