Best Show in Town: Molina’s

The best political show in town is playing on Tuesday mornings at the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration. That’s when Supervisor Gloria Molina tears apart the bureaucrats.

But as officials writhe in embarrassment from Molina’s assault, you might ask whether the performance is all show and cheap shots.

Or is Molina at last beginning a serious examination of a huge and secretive county government that has long needed reform?

This last Tuesday, Molina’s target was Tom Tidemanson, director of one of the county’s biggest departments--Public Works. The subject was the death of Mario Sanchez, a Public Works Department employee.

Last June, Sanchez fell to his death after a rope snapped while he was repairing a nearly vertical concrete retaining wall high on the side of Pacoima Canyon.

After the tragedy, an investigation by Cal/OSHA, the state’s industrial safety agency, found the rope was too thin and did not have the wire core mandated by state law.

Inspectors also found that the hoisting machine pulling Sanchez up the canyon was “not approved for the raising and lowering of personnel.” Cables supporting the scaffolds had been suspended improperly. Equipment had not been inspected. There was evidence of inadequate training.

Six Cal/OSHA citations were filed against the Public Works Department. More may follow, the inspectors said, after a review of employee training records.

For years, a group of Public Works Department blue-collar workers have been complaining of such unsafe practices. But they’ve gotten nowhere with the Board of Supervisors.

Though disarmingly unassuming, Public Works chief Tidemanson has considerable power. When he talks, the supervisors listen.

Tidemanson directs the spending of many millions of dollars each year to construct buildings, sewers, roads and other projects. The supervisors, whose names adorn many of Public Works’ projects, have always appreciated the job Tidemanson is doing.

So the Board of Supervisors has pretty much ignored the complaints of people like Public Works construction foreman Rudy Rico, a chunky, talkative man known as the county’s champion whistle-blower. “They laughed me out of the building,” Rico told me.

On this particular Tuesday, however, Rico finally had his chance.

Molina had arranged for the whistle-blower to appear before the board and discuss Sanchez’s death. With Rico on the supervisorial witness stand were Raul Nunez, president of the Chicano Employes Assn., and Sanchez’s widow, Christina.

Rico said he had warned Tidemanson’s office of safety violations on the Pacoima Canyon job. When it was her turn, Christina Sanchez complained about the broken rope. “My husband,” she said, “would be alive today except for the price of one safety rope.”

And, in the most shocking moment of the hearing, she said Tidemanson’s staff refused to let her and her children into the canyon area so they could drop flowers on the spot where Sanchez died.

That’s when Molina struck. “Mr. Tidemanson,” she summoned. Tidemanson, sitting off to the side, looked up. Imperiously, Molina ordered him to step forward.

Will he now permit Mrs. Sanchez and her children to drop the flowers? “No problem,” replied Tidemanson. Have you corrected the safety failures in the canyon? “Yes ma’am,” said Tidemanson, noting that the job has been shut down “until we know what the problems are.”

“Rudy Rico warned you,” Molina said. “That’s not true,” insisted Tidemanson, who right there challenged Rico to name the person to whom he had spoken. Rico immediately gave him a name for all in the board room to hear. Tidemanson shook him off. “I cannot find a person on my staff who talked to him,” Tidemanson said of Rico.

Maybe not. But the whistle-blower had finally been heard, thanks to Molina.

Still, there are still questions for Molina to ask and get answered. Who, for example, are the officials to blame for Mario Sanchez’s death? Were Cal/OSHA’s findings a symptom of something deeply wrong in the Public Works Department? And why were the whistle-blowers ignored for so long? It’s as if the county has a code of silence as strict as the cops.

Molina will have to break that code. If she does, if she bores into the very heart of the mysterious monster known as county government, she’ll be remembered for more than putting on a good show.