NEWS ANALYSIS : Rudderless Council Sails Sea of Rancor : Government: Maureen O’Connor’s absences, lame-duck status put emphasis on districts, special interests and jockeying for mayoralty.

It was one of those increasingly common moments at San Diego City Hall when the back-room bitterness spills out in public.

Reading from a newspaper article in which Mayor Maureen O’Connor had again described council newcomers John Hartley and Linda Bernhardt as “young and inexperienced,” Hartley ended the March 19 council session by publicly asking the mayor to knock it off.

“I disagree with a lot of people in this council, and I think we disagree agreeably,” Hartley said. “I’d like to make that offer to you, Mayor O’Connor. Let’s disagree on the issues, fine. These kinds of comments, I don’t think serve us (or) serve the city of San Diego.”

Five months after the city’s first district elections realigned power on the City Council, moments like those have set the tone at City Hall. Despite some legislative accomplishments and the council’s more liberal bent, the story out of City Hall in 1990 is a government hip deep in bickering, power-seeking, political posturing and a divisiveness that have fostered hesitation on some of the city’s major problems.

“There’s little doubt in my mind that this is the worst group of people that the city has ever had at the helm down there in City Hall,” said retired Appellate Court Judge Ed Butler, who has been watching and participating in city politics for 30 years. “I think the people are not adequate for the job. They’ve let their ambitions, pride and drive blind them toward what they should be doing for the city.”

Virtually leaderless because of O’Connor’s absences and lame-duck status, the council members are focusing on their districts, the demands of special-interest groups and the early jockeying for a successor to the mayor--who will step down in 1992. Coalition politics and personality clashes have contributed to the discord.

In five months, the council has developed a reputation for petty public arguments and a haste to move forward that has more than once led to embarrassing retreats and initiatives put on hold.

“There has certainly been more squabbling than in the past, in a lot of directions,” said Wayne Raffesberger, executive director of the downtown interest group San Diegans Inc. and a former aide to Councilman Ron Roberts. “The atmosphere is more confrontational than anything else. . . . There doesn’t seem to be a lot of civility up there.”

In just five months, the council bickered through four sessions without coming close to solving its $60-million budget shortfall, O’Connor and Councilman Ron Roberts heckled six other council members for increasing their staffs, and O’Connor needled Bernhardt and Hartley for spending money to remodel their offices during the city’s budget crisis.

A council majority composed of Bernhardt, Hartley, Bob Filner, Abbe Wolfsheimer and Wes Pratt rejected the first Latino ever nominated for a seat on the county Water Authority--apparently to spite O’Connor.

In the meantime, the council first supported and then backed away from raising taxes, increasing developer fees, banning booze on the beach and halting the city’s $2.8-billion sewage treatment project, the subject of a federal court legal settlement.

“It’s so easy to play to the press and play to the media, instead of making those serious decisions,” Pratt said. “So we all have to grow up to a certain extent.”

Despite the rancor, many note that the council has not only continued to function, but has proven its effectiveness by moving ahead with some decisions that might not have been made a year ago. It has established a $12.9-million trust fund to build housing for the poor, appointed a black and a woman to the San Diego Unified Port District, approved a gay rights ordinance and taken the first steps on strict environmental and growth controls. Noting the budget problems, it has frozen plans to build a new City Hall complex.

Some of the most important decisions were forced on the council: the agreement to build the sewage treatment system came only after the federal government sued the city, and action on the growth controls was motivated by proposed citizen referendums that were headed for the ballot. But the council’s defenders say the actions show that the government has not bogged down in discord.

“Honestly, I think they’re doing as well as can be expected with a new council and a new dynamic,” said Rick Taylor, Bernhardt’s political consultant. “I don’t see nearly the kind of divisiveness that could have happened.”

Some are predicting that the coming months will yield a less contentious City Council and a reduction in some of the angry language.

“That’s going to tone down,” Pratt said, “because that’s just people getting used to each other.”

In retrospect, the council that took over when Hartley and Linda Bernhardt were sworn into office Dec. 4 was ready-made for the kind of conflict that has ensued. Hartley’s and Bernhardt’s upset victories over entrenched incumbents Gloria McColl and Ed Struiksma respectively provided vindication for neighborhood activists who had long promised that district elections would improve their representation and lessen the influence of developer money.

Moreover, the victories shifted the council’s balance of power from a loose coalition of conservative, pro-development Republicans to a managed-growth, more-liberal majority. Last year’s ins--Roberts, McCarty, Henderson--were out. Last year’s outs--Filner, Pratt and Wolfsheimer--were in.

A month later, O’Connor concluded her State of the City address by saying: “Simply put, I have decided not to seek reelection to the office of mayor when my term expires in 1992.” If the race for mayor did not begin that night, it certainly started the next day.

With Roberts, Filner, Henderson and even Bernhardt believed to be staking out constituencies for a possible mayoral run, council debate on some issues has been long on rhetoric and short on compromise. The public has been treated to Bernhardt-Roberts debates over the council’s Earth Day resolution, Henderson’s treatises on the city’s allegedly bogus budget crisis, and endless public bickering between Filner and O’Connor.

“There is this power vacuum and they’re all rushing in to fill it,” Butler said. “And, to fill it, you have to snap away and rip away at someone.

“Hartley, for instance . . . makes Gloria McColl look like Margaret Thatcher.”

Filner “is totally incapable of putting aside what personal agenda he has and looking at what is and what ought to be in the best interest of the city,” he added. “If the guy really wants to be mayor and wants to make a contribution, he ought to be straight and tall, instead of this snarling jackal attitude he has.”

But even Butler, an O’Connor partisan, admits that the mayor must take some responsibility for creating the current situation by announcing the end of her tenure nearly three years before stepping down. “That’s simply throwing food to put these piranhas into a feeding frenzy,” he said.

Perhaps more importantly, O’Connor, who used to complain that the council’s former conservative majority blocked her initiatives, again finds herself isolated from the current majority--one with which she is philosophically allied. Instead of working with them or attempting to lead them, O’Connor in some cases has been reduced to a sideline heckler.

“Maureen has had the opportunity to move the city in a more progressive, more responsive, more compassionate direction, based on the new makeup of the council,” Pratt said. “For whatever reasons, she just hasn’t done that. I look back, and I play it all out, and I just don’t understand that.”

“The real truth is, we do have a lack of leadership, and rather than have a vision for the city, we have this internal battle which she has had a major hand in,” Hartley said.

Paul Downey, the mayor’s spokesman, insists that the council would have suffered growing pains whether or not O’Connor had announced that she was stepping down.

“I think some of the council members don’t have much experience, and they’re getting their feet wet,” Downey said. “I think there may have been a shakeout whatever she had done.”

More importantly, Downey insists, is the heightened power of vocal interest groups, which have capitalized on the new district elections system. When just 7,900 voters can elect a councilman, as in Hartley’s case, groups such as the Sierra Club that can deliver votes receive very much attention--and the city’s interest suffers, Downey argued.

“I think you’re seeing a lot of special-interest politics, and it’s directly related to district elections,” he said. “Because it only takes a few thousand votes to get elected in an individual district these days, they are very concerned about how they’re seen by small interests in their district.”

“I think what the district election does is, it makes you immune from the criticism of the entire city,” Roberts said. “It puts a premium on you delivering (federal funds) and things like that to your district, and having them forgive the fact that maybe you’re not doing such a hot job overall for the city.” As a consequence, council members are more willing to support their political allies, even if they disagree, as long as their districts don’t suffer, Roberts said.

But district-elections advocates say the new system gets blamed for council conflict because it gives more power to neighborhood activists and others without business or developer money.

“Before, the developers . . . had the rules set up to basically focus on their special interest, and we’ve changed the rules of the game to at least level the playing field,” said Ron Ottinger, chairman of the Sierra Club’s political committee.

“The problem is, some folks are not used to losing, and they have a problem with losing,” Pratt said.

Nevertheless, Wolfsheimer, Hartley, Pratt, Bernhardt and Filner certainly have been guilty of some of the excesses that last year’s developer-backed majority was accused of.

On March 27, Fred Thompson stepped before the council and asked to be named the first Latino to serve on the Water Authority. With virtually no comment, Pratt, Filner and Hartley--who represent districts with sizable minority populations--joined Bernhardt and Wolfsheimer to reject Thompson’s nomination.

Thompson had the misfortune to appear shortly after the latest war of words between the council and O’Connor, this time over the mayor’s “challenge” that they collectively match a proposed staff cut in her office that would save the city $1 million.

Pratt conceded that “there may have been some” political revenge taken on the mayor at Thompson’s expense. Thompson, who has since met with Pratt and Bernhardt, said he is hopeful that the council will reconsider his nomination soon.

Roberts asserts that the same coalition--minus Hartley but joined by Henderson and McCarty--was playing politics when it switched the primary site for a new Sports Arena from downtown, the location championed by Roberts, to Sorrento Hills, where developer Harry Cooper wants to build it. The motive, Roberts claims, was to prevent a Roberts victory, regardless of whether the Sorrento Hills location makes sense.

But Pratt insisted that Roberts is mistaken this time, noting that the council changed positions only after City Manager John Lockwood’s office issued a report saying that a downtown arena is financially unfeasible without at least $26.5 million in city subsidies.

The council faces its biggest test of the year in the next two months as it tackles the city’s fiscal 1991 budget again--this time without the luxury of putting off budget cuts or tax increases.

Several council members are predicting a more amicable debate this spring, with less political posturing and more attention to the seriousness of their plight than in February and March, when a badly divided council could agree only to place one new tax and a Gann spending waiver before voters this June.

“People were trying to make political hay out of our budget situation, instead of looking at what the city manager was saying,” Pratt said.

In fact, Hartley said he and the mayor are on civil terms again.

“She’s been quite cordial the past two weeks,” he said. “I don’t need to have a battle with the mayor.”