Retired City Executive C. Erwin Piper Dies

C. Erwin Piper, the soft-spoken, quietly efficient administrative officer for Los Angeles for 17 years, died early Wednesday.

The former FBI agent and head of the city’s Public Works Department was 84 and suffered a stroke while undergoing treatment for cancer.

Family friend Hal Marlowe said Piper died at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where he had been hospitalized since last week.

Piper was one of the few subjects that Mayor Tom Bradley and former Mayor Sam Yorty ever agreed on and both men were consistent in their admiration in comments after his death.

It was Yorty who appointed Piper to the city’s top administrative job in 1962 and Bradley who presided over the white-haired, distinguished-looking executive’s retirement luncheon in 1979.

On Wednesday, Yorty called Piper “the greatest city administrator the city ever had. He was so efficient and so accurate. . . .”

Yorty credited him with maintaining a balanced budget and recalled the day when he elevated Piper from the Public Works Department to the No. 1 non-elective job in the city.

“We had a shake-hands agreement. He agreed to resign if I ever asked him to--and of course I never did. . . .”

It was Bradley who said when Piper retired that “in 16 years in public life, the only thing I ever agreed with Sam Yorty on was C. Erwin Piper.”

On Wednesday, the mayor reiterated that sentiment in a statement, saying Piper “introduced modern management principles to municipal government. He streamlined the budgetary process while making it more understandable to the average citizen and brought a rigorous discipline to the administration of the city’s financial affairs. . . . He always strove to serve Los Angeles as best he knew how. . . .”

Piper was a career law enforcement officer when he entered what some even then said was the equally hazardous arena of municipal politics.

He became only the third administrative officer in Los Angeles’ history when Yorty named him to the $24,050 a year post in 1962.

He was 53 and succeeded George A. Terhune. He had spent 20 years with the FBI as a special agent in various cities across the country.

Yorty originally named him to the Public Works Board shortly after he was elected mayor in 1961 and he was quickly elected president by his fellow board members.

His quiet approach and unquestioned integrity led Yorty to propose him to the City Council when Terhune announced his retirement.

Once in the job, Piper became known for fiscal conservatism, often putting him at odds with Yorty and the council. He urged cuts in dozens of programs close to council members’ hearts that later were reinstated by the more politically sensitive elected officials.

Nearing retirement, he said he won 95% of his battles with the council, even though he was criticized late in his life for being slow to hire minorities and women.

He attributed much of his success to an innate understanding of City Hall politics.

“I have never called a press conference,” he said in 1974. “I have a cardinal rule: Never get between the elected official and his news release or camera. If you do you’re in trouble.”

Much of his time was taken with balancing the various demands of department heads against the realities of the city budget, which the mayor presented for the council’s approval each year.

It fell to Piper to be the devil’s advocate who pared down departmental requests to what he felt were necessary. It was a mark of his civility that few complained of his often harsh cutbacks, at least publicly.

However, he would say with a slight smile, many of them viewed him privately as “a tough, opinionated old bastard.”

Those outside government were a little more charitable.

Erwin Baker, who covered city government for The Times from 1963 until his retirement in 1983 said: “Of all the officials I covered during 20 years at City Hall, none could match the integrity of C. Erwin Piper (whose nickname was Pipe to some who knew him).

” Pipe’s responses to my questions were not only courteous and informative, but--most important--reliable.”

Piper, a Tulsa, Okla., native, had come to the Southland as a youth. He graduated from Manual Arts High School in South Los Angeles and earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and master’s and doctoral degrees from USC.

He was the first person to receive a doctorate from USC’s School of Public Administration, and after his retirement was named a “distinguished practitioner in residence” there.

A 13-acre city operations center behind Union Station has been named for him, a tribute to his lengthy involvement in such local landmarks as the Convention Center, the Civic Center Mall and City Hall East.

After his retirement, industrialist Armand Hammer appointed him to the Occidental Petroleum Corp. board.

Piper, who lived in Studio City, is survived by his wife, Ione. Memorial services are pending at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. Burial will be private.

Flags at city buildings will remain at half-staff through Friday.