Police Reform Proposals Put on Ballot : Government: Measures would make chief more accountable and revise discipline process. Controversial plan to expand Board of Supervisors will not be submitted to voters.

A historic package of police reforms, born in the aftermath of the Rodney G. King beating to make the chief and his force more accountable for their actions, was approved for the ballot by the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday over the objections of the powerful police union.

The most far-reaching referendum on police powers since the City Charter was written nearly 70 years ago will be presented to voters in the June 2 primary election as a single ballot measure requiring majority approval to become law.

“At the heart of these recommendations is accountability,” Mayor Tom Bradley said. “I am confident this goal can be achieved if voters unite behind the ballot initiative.”

The council also voted to place on the ballot a controversial “Buy American” plan that would allow city officials to give bidding preference to local and state firms, and set a minimum domestic content requirement for city purchases.

Meanwhile, the county Board of Supervisors failed Tuesday to muster enough votes to place on the ballot a measure to expand the five-member panel to seven or nine members. Also falling short was a proposal for an elected county executive to take over the job now held by Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon.

The county measures, touted by supporters as major reforms to improve accountability and increase minority representation on the board, had the backing of Supervisors Ed Edelman and Kenneth Hahn but died for lack of the third vote required to place them on the ballot. Supervisor Gloria Molina--who made expansion of the board a centerpiece of her historic campaign that led to her election last year--was absent, as was Deane Dana. Mike Antonovich voted against the proposals.

In city measures, the police reform package was unanimously approved for the ballot even though the City Council failed to reach an agreement over labor issues Tuesday with the Police Protective League.

Union leaders declined to discuss details of the talks, which are protected from public scrutiny by state and federal labor laws. Nor would they say whether the union would campaign against the reforms, some of which are already opposed by Chief Daryl F. Gates.

The reforms were based on recommendations made by the Christopher Commission, convened after the King beating to review LAPD operations and use of force.

Specifically, the charter amendment would limit a chief to two five-year terms, and would allow the mayor to nominate a new chief from three candidates named by the Personnel Department.

The civilian Police Commission would have the power to fire a chief, with the mayor and the council entitled to reverse the commission’s action. The measure also would allow the council to fire the chief by a two-thirds vote.

Under the current system, a chief has Civil Service protection enabling him to serve unless he is found guilty of misconduct.

One controversial labor issue in the measure would extend the statute of limitations for bringing misconduct charges against an officer from one year after the date of an occurrence to one year after discovery of the incident.

A separate proposal would allow an officer to be punished for misconduct by demotion from his current Civil Service classification.

Gates, 65, who has said he will retire in June, offered only a short statement through a spokesman Tuesday: “Combining all the proposed changes into one ballot measure is going to make it easier for citizens to defeat them.”

Backers of the measure had more to say. “Today we celebrate a big victory,” said Michael Woo, the first council member to call for Gates’ resignation after the King beating. “Tomorrow we get to work to bring about an even bigger victory at the ballot box. The politicians can’t make the Christopher Commission recommendations into law. Only the people can.”

Warren Christopher, the prominent lawyer who headed the blue-ribbon commission and is now chairman of the campaign for charter reform, said he was “very pleased with the intensity the council showed in making sure the charter amendment was on the ballot in the appropriate form.”

Opposing the reforms is Citizens for Integrity and Viability in the City Charter, or CIVIC, which is headed by Gates’ attorney Jay Grodin; businessman Don Clinton, owner of Clifton’s Cafeteria, and actress Peggy Rowe Estrada.

“We believe good government in the city of Los Angeles is being challenged by the proposed charter amendment,” Estrada said. “The bottom line is we need to protect the City Charter to keep corruption out of the city of Los Angeles and politics out of the Police Department.”

The “Buy American” proposal, authored by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, was unanimously approved by the council without debate. However, interviews with economists, city buyers and financial analysts indicated strong reservations about the domestic content provision, which may be difficult to implement because many products are hybrids of the global market.

Also approved for placement on the ballot was a measure authorizing city officials to negotiate new, long-term concession agreements with merchants on historic Olvera Street--an effort to preserve the Mexican flavor of the tourist spot.

The Board of Supervisors’ rejection of the expansion and elected county executive measures leaves only one county measure on the June ballot--a proposed property assessment to pay for $520 million in improvements to beaches, parks, the Hollywood Bowl and the Los Angeles Zoo.

Molina, a backer of board expansion, recently has said she would support it only if it was linked to her proposed ethics package. Her plan, which would have created a county Ethics Commission and prohibited supervisors from accepting gifts from lobbyists, did not have the backing of other supervisors, and Molina left Tuesday’s meeting before the vote on the expansion and elected-county-executive measures.

Molina spokesman Robert Alaniz acknowledged that Molina did not attach conditions to her support for board expansion during the campaign, but said her position has changed as a result “of having been here a year and seeing the way the county conducts business and understanding the mood of the people nowadays. They don’t want more government without some sort of (ethics) reform package.”

Molina left the meeting early to fly to Washington to give a speech at the Smithsonian Institution and testify at a congressional hearing on the Voting Rights Act.

Hahn, the board’s leading expansion proponent, expressed hope that the plan could be considered for the November ballot.