Power Struggles Intensify for Bradley, Adversaries : Politics: The mayor and his opponents face off in at least four hearings dealing with leadership of the city.

Three days after his controversial tour of the Far East, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley stepped into an unusual political cross-fire Wednesday, much of it related to the power struggle that has resulted from the police beating of Rodney G. King.

The individual controversies encompassed everything from the city’s huge budget deficit to the propriety of the mayor’s 16-day trip at a time of crisis. In at least four hearings--two of them in the same courtroom--Bradley and his political adversaries squared off in an escalating battle over city leadership.

In one of those hearings, an unusually outspoken and independent City Council rejected, for the first time in 15 years, one of Bradley’s appointments to a city policy board. The 8 to 4 vote against Larry Drasin, a nominee for the Civil Service Commission, was meant as a signal to Bradley that the council will not tolerate his meddling with the city’s Civil Service system in his bid to oust embattled Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, council members said.

Drasin was seen as a handpicked representative of Bradley’s anti-Gates’ policies at a time when Bradley has sought the chief’s removal because of the King incident. In an apparent affront to Bradley, Drasin was not even allowed to address the council before his nomination was turned down.

“Mr. Drasin is a pawn in an unwise and hopefully unsuccessful political strategy,” Councilwoman Joy Picus, who spearheaded the action, said later. “We’ve seen a whole lot of things lately where the council is saying that (Bradley) is not running the city right or we can run it a whole lot better. The council is saying that we’re taking the authority here . . . and we’re going to make this city work.”

On other fronts:

* The council’s budget-writing team, grappling with a $177-million deficit, agreed to scrap Bradley’s key cost-cutting proposals and restore 400 police officers that Bradley planned to eliminate. The three-member committee also recommended restoring funding for a citywide after-school recreational program for latchkey children and agreed to provide additional money to keep parks and libraries open.

* In Superior Court, a hearing over the Police Commission’s attempt to furlough Gates became a counterattack on Commissioner Melanie Lomax, a recent Bradley appointee who is regarded as a key figure in the mayor’s strategy for removing Gates. During testimony, Lomax was identified as a source who had leaked sensitive internal documents concerning the case. One city councilman and Gates’ lawyer immediately called on Bradley to remove her from the commission.

* In another court hearing, the legal fight between Bradley and the City Council resumed over the mayor’s inadvertent signing of a June ballot measure that would limit his own powers. Bradley had tried to rescind his authorization last month, only to have council members force the issue into court. Superior Court Judge Ronald Sohigian is expected to rule today on whether the measure will remain on the June 4 ballot.

* Surrounded by television cameras, the leader of group seeking to recall Bradley from office served the mayor’s office with official notice of the effort. Marvin Feldman, chairman of the recall committee that supports Gates, said Bradley had exercised poor leadership in the King controversy. To place a recall initiative on the ballot, the group must collect 210,000 voter signatures within 120 days.

* Bradley lashed out at City Atty. James K. Hahn, who last week unleashed a blistering attack on Bradley for taking the Far East trip at a time when, according to Hahn, the city is being torn apart by crime and the furor over the King incident. At a City Hall news conference, Bradley defended the trip as important to protecting Los Angeles’ multimillion-dollar tourism industry.

“You talk about insensitive, idiotic . . . temper tantrums,” Bradley said. “He (Hahn) doesn’t have the faintest clue about the . . . $400-million impact that Far East tourism has on the city.”

Fundamental conflicts in Los Angeles’ arcane City Charter underlie the current power struggles between branches of city government, said City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie, the city’s top bureaucrat.

“It’s just all come to a head on a number of issues at one time,” said Comrie, who has remained neutral in the various struggles. “Normally, there is an isolated issue, but not so many things simultaneously. There is some unusual confusion because of the Charter, which is extremely complex and detailed (and) very awkward to work with.”

Under the Charter, certain powers are divided between the mayor and the council. The mayor, for example, has the authority to appoint members of city commissions, and in most cases the council passes judgment on his nominees. Historically, it has been rare for the City Council to reject a mayor’s nominee.

Bradley seemed particularly peeved that council members rejected Drasin for the Civil Service post without permitting the nominee to speak on his own behalf. Bradley called the move “a sad reflection on what motivates the 12 members of the council. . . . The facts aren’t a matter of concern (to some council members). Only the council’s gossip mill is a factor.”

The power struggle was especially bitter because last month Bradley removed attorney Claire Bronowski from the commission and selected Drasin to replace her, a move that some council members immediately viewed as an attempt to pack the commission with anti-Gates members. While Bradley’s office denied the allegation, saying the moves were a part of the routine reshuffling of commission positions, council members did not buy the argument.

Council President John Ferraro said, the attempt to appoint Drasin was “strictly a power grab (by Bradley) to pack the commission with people who knew what Bradley’s attitude was about Daryl Gates and would vote accordingly.”

Noting the unusual level of conflict Wednesday between the mayor’s office and the council, Ferraro said: “These are strange times. The day when (Bradley) had all the votes on the council he needs is gone.”

In his unprecedented fifth term as mayor, Bradley no longer works with a council packed with political allies, City Hall insiders noted. Gone, through death and turnover, are members such as Gilbert Lindsay, Dave Cunningham, Pat Russell, Howard Finn and Peggy Stevenson--who, in years past, regularly supported Bradley’s political aims.

At the same time, crime and budget issues in Los Angeles have worsened, and council members have taken a more dogged stance in dealing with Bradley’s proposed solutions.

“I think there’s just a greater scrutiny of every issue that comes down the pike,” Ferraro said.

Yaroslavsky, chairman of the council’s Finance and Revenue Committee, described the panel’s revamping of the mayor’s proposed budget on Wednesday as significant--especially in maintaining the current level of police staffing.

“The debate raging between Gates and Bradley is symbolic,” Yaroslavsky said. “The bullets flying in the streets of this city are real.”

Bradley’s proposed cuts would reduce the city’s active police force from 8,332 sworn officers to about 7,900. The council committee looked elsewhere for possible cuts, restoring a total of $25.5 million in proposed cuts and selectively trimming $17.2 million from other city departments and programs.

Although the council typically rewrites portions of the budget before returning it to Bradley for final approval or line item veto, Wednesday’s action on the $3.9-billion spending plan was unusually drastic, and it came at a time of financial crisis.

“The mayor’s proposed budget differed fundamently with what our committee did,” Yaroslavsky said. “We’re talking about $25 million in shifts . . . that’s more than a symbolic act.”

Yaroslavsky added, however, that in some areas--notably proposed tax hikes--the mayor and the council were in agreement.

The court hearing on the King controversy seemed only to add to Bradley’s woes. An attorney representing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an intervener in the case, testified that confidential documents were leaked to him by Lomax, Bradley’s appointee to the Police Commission.

Critics said the assertion by lawyer Pete Haviland showed that Lomax harbors a bias against Gates.

“The credibility of the Police Commission has been irreparably impaired by Commissioner Lomax’s behavior in this incident,” Yaroslavsky wrote in a letter to Bradley, calling for Lomax’s removal.

Gates’ attorney, Jay Grodin, said the disclosure about Lomax “confirms our worst fears” about the commission and added, “This illegal and unethical act calls for her immediate removal or resignation.”

Grodin suggested that elements within and outside the city government are involved in “a conspiracy” to oust the police chief. The Police Commission has ordered an investigation of Gates and his department after the King beating.

Lomax was not available for comment, but the commission’s private attorney, Hillel Chodos, said Lomax did nothing improper by releasing the documents--letters from the city attorney’s office to police commissioners advising them of the procedures under which they could discipline a police chief or place him on administrative leave.

Later Wednesday in Superior Court, Bradley’s own attorney squared off against a lawyer representing the City Council in the case of the mistaken ballot initiative. Bradley’s attorney argued that the ballot measure--which would reduce the mayor’s control over a number of city departments, including the port and airport--was mistakenly approved by the mayor on a day when dozens of items flowed across his desk.

In the past, such errors were corrected without much difficulty. But this particular mistake involved a ballot measure that Bradley once had labeled a “naked power grab” by the council.

In March, when he tried to correct his stance on the ballot ordinance, the council voted to challenge the action.

In a deposition, Bradley testified Monday that he had signed at least two previous ordinances by accident, but was able to correct them.

Bradley, whose office staff places documents for signing in a stack on his desk, defended the longstanding procedure in which he does not read every document as his signature is applied.

“It is simply impractical, if not impossible, for a mayor, any mayor, in the course of a day or week or a month to read every line, every statement, every letter, every council file that comes across his desk for signature,” Bradley testified.

Times staff writers Rich Connell, Frederick M. Muir and Louis Sahagun contributed to this story.