Dominant Role of City Manager Comes Under Scrutiny : Government: James C. Hankla’s dominance in Disney negotiations and police chief’s firing prompt questions. The answers are rooted in the City Charter.

When the Long Beach police chief was fired last month, it was City Manager James C. Hankla’s doing. When the city was negotiating with the Walt Disney Co. for a waterfront theme park last year, the City Council stood on the sidelines and let Hankla conduct the talks. And when the budget of more than $1 billion is presented to the council every year, it is crafted by Hankla’s staff.

Hankla’s dominant role in such crucial city affairs has prompted various City Hall watchers to observe that it is Hankla, rather than the mayor and council, who is running Long Beach.

“People are beginning to talk more about the perception that Hankla has become far too powerful for one person,” said Frank Berry, a community activist and regional official of the NAACP. “He has almost blind support from the elected officials. . . . Hankla just seems to be able to do whatever the heck he wants to, and then he sells (it to) the council.”

The fault, many observers contend, lies not so much with Hankla as with the mayor and council and the structure of local government.

“It would seem only logical that he would take the reins when by and large it seems the City Council is not taking control,” said Scott Ringwelski of the Willmore City Heritage Assn. “As a result, the leadership is left to whomever will take it.”

Former Planning Commissioner Manuel E. Perez described Hankla as “the kind of person who sets the agenda,” whereas the “council follows it.”

Hankla, city manager since 1987, “has more say because the mayor’s not establishing a direction,” Perez said. “The council is not establishing a direction. . . . The council in general doesn’t have the vaguest notion where it’s going.”

Council members, while insisting that they do know where they are going, argue that they have neither the time nor the resources to seize hold of the budget or many other major issues. Moreover, they note that the City Charter specifically gives the city manager--not them--authority to handle such personnel matters as the firing of Police Chief Lawrence L. Binkley.

“I had a number of calls from citizens who wanted me to catapult myself right into it,” Councilman Doug Drummond said, referring to the Binkley matter. But he couldn’t, he said, because it was Hankla’s exclusive domain.

Councilman Les Robbins suggested it was for the better that the council was not in the thick of Binkley’s personnel review--otherwise it would have become too political. “I don’t have any problems at all with the way it was handled,” Robbins said.

With only part-time positions on the council and a limited staff, council members say they are inherently dependent on city staff for information and analysis, and therefore less able to launch their own evaluations of municipal matters.

“As long as we have the status of being part-time council people, we’re in a very difficult position,” Councilman Evan Anderson Braude said.

Hankla, for his part, bristled at the suggestion that he runs the city while the council tags along. Critics, he suggested, are ignorant of the City Charter and the city manager form of government found in Long Beach and many other California communities.

“What they are doing is accusing me of doing my job,” said Hankla, who spent his early career working for Long Beach. He moved to Virginia and was Los Angeles County’s chief administrative officer before returning to Long Beach as city manager. “Folks don’t want to come to grips with the form of government we have.

“I work for the City Council and I run for office every day and every day they can fire me,” said Hankla, who is one of the highest-paid city administrators in the nation, earning a salary of $150,666 a year. “Does that sound like I run everything?”

He said it would have been absurd to have the council take part in the Disney negotiations. “Can you imagine nine (councilmen) involved in negotiations?” Hankla asked, adding that the city attorney and the city auditor, both elected officials, participated in the Disney talks.

Hankla went on to say that those who decry the city manager’s role “have this Eastern model in mind (of a strong, partisan mayor). And that Eastern model has been racked by corruption.”

Mayor Ernie Kell said it was nonsensical to assert that Hankla simply does what he wants. “He is not a fool. Hankla knows he’s there at the will of the mayor and the City Council.”

While it may appear that Hankla alone made the decision to fire Binkley, Kell said, “he made it with the blessing of me and the council. . . . I’m sure if the majority of elected officials had been opposed, I don’t think Hankla would have carried through.”

At the same time, Kell denied that he and the council are not leading. “I think there are a lot of things we do out there,” he said, citing, for example, the hiring of additional police officers, and anti-graffiti and anti-drug programs.

Braude also noted that Hankla has yielded to the council on major issues. Hankla did not want to establish either a Human Relations Commission--which tries to promote harmony between the city’s different ethnic groups--or the Citizen Police Complaint Commission, Braude said. But both were created.

Those who believe that Hankla has the ruling hand in Long Beach say that is nothing new. The city manager has always had the real power, they say, primarily because of the part-time nature of the council and the structure of government.

“It’s really not a personality thing,” said Marc Coleman of Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, a citywide political group that has advocated a full-time council. “When (John E.) Dever was the city manager, there was the same problem, and if we take Hankla out of the picture, it would be the same problem. . . . The system is wrong.”

The creation of a full-time, paid mayor’s position four years ago represented a small move toward a strong mayoral government. No longer was the mayor simply a council member chosen by colleagues to hold the title. But the job was endowed with little real power. The mayor has no council vote, only a veto that can be overriden by a simple majority of the council. Kell has exercised the veto only once--and was immediately overriden.

Still, City Hall watchers complain that Kell has failed to exercise what power he has, leaving a leadership vacuum on the council that opens the doors to strong management from Hankla’s office.

“The City Council has become divided and therefore to a certain extent, drifts,” said Paul Schmidt, a political science professor at Cal State Long Beach. “The mayor has not, for one reason or another, been able to pull together the reins of power in his office. . . . (Hankla is) obviously running the city by default.”