Disarray Swamps L.A. Riot Recovery : Aftermath: Scattered efforts vanish into a political vacuum, with leaders unable to forge a coalition. Many fear city is losing best chance for meaningful response.

Six months after the city’s devastating riots, Los Angeles is without a plan to address the fundamental urban needs underscored by the discord, from economic development to housing to securing greater community participation in setting the city’s direction.

Although the atmosphere of chaos produced by three days of mayhem long ago subsided, urban specialists, city officials and community organizers say an air of disarray still hangs over the city’s recovery efforts, with piecemeal proposals disappearing into a policy vacuum.

What is worse, the city largely has failed to exploit the energy and community purpose released by the riots, they warn. No one--not Mayor Tom Bradley, the City Council, the County Board of Supervisors or Rebuild L.A.’s triumvirate of chairmen--has seemed able to forge a sense of unity among the city’s disparate elements.

Bereft of a coordinated plan of action, Los Angeles may have lost its best chance to mount a meaningful response to last spring’s civil unrest, these analysts say.

“There was a tremendous outpouring of goodwill after the riots, and in many cases it has dissipated,” said Allen Scott, director of UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. “Now, in any case, goodwill is not enough.”

Concern about the city’s competence in managing the thorny healing process is beginning to echo across a wide spectrum of Southern California’s political and social landscape, The Times found in about 20 interviews this month with civic experts and activists.

“It looks as if the city government is incapable of doing anything. It is . . . moribund,” said Paul Lee, a Legal Aid Foundation attorney who has worked extensively with riot victims.

“There doesn’t seem to be a grand plan,” said Oscar Wright, who, as regional administrator of the Small Business Administration, has assumed an active role in recovery efforts.

No one disputes the commitment and effort shown by the mayor’s office in seeking disaster assistance for riot victims. And some see a ray of hope in the emergence of community-based groups willing to tackle the city’s most formidable problems.

“I’m encouraged at the broad cross-section of community coalitions forming and moving forward, sometimes with the assistance of government but sometimes despite it,” said Mary Lee, directing attorney of the Legal Aid Foundation’s South-Central office.

Still, Wright and others cite the danger of increasing frustration and tension if the public perceives that little progress is being made. “People need the confidence of knowing there is something going on that is bigger than themselves,” said Wright, a conservative South-Central native.

The consequences of this leadership void are becoming apparent in many areas, experts say:

* African-American, Latino and Asian-American riot victims, in a rising crescendo of interethnic conflict, contend that they have been shortchanged in the rebuilding process. Though Bradley and others have called for understanding, no one has stepped forward to mediate their competing claims.

* The absence of strong central direction has contributed to the slowness of the rebuilding process, as manifested in the piles of debris that still dot the city.

* The city’s disorganized response has hampered its ability to secure federal assistance.

At a recent meeting of the City Council’s Ad Hoc Recovery Committee, city officials conceded that federal funds earmarked for jobs and housing have not come through as promised. But they voiced virtually no public outcry when the Federal Emergency Management Agency halted some public assistance payments to riot-torn Los Angeles after hurricanes devastated Florida and Hawaii.

City Councilman Michael Woo, a candidate for mayor, calls some of the criticism unfair. “I know that Mayor Bradley went back to Washington to lobby Congress to make sure we got our share of aid,” he said, “and I and others have pounded on doors.”

But urban specialists say much of the public is confused about the lines of responsibility in the rebuilding process--and whom to hold accountable if recovery efforts falter or fail.

Bradley’s establishment immediately after the riots of the private sector Rebuild L.A. organization has, in the short run, only complicated the picture, they say. While agreeing that Rebuild L.A. holds great promise for developing long-term business strategies, many experts voice misgivings that city leaders have ceded the group too much responsibility for directing recovery efforts.

“Part of my frustration as a member of the public is that I don’t have a clear picture of what the mission, rules and responsibilities are of the city vs. Rebuild L.A.,” said Jane Pisano, dean of USC’s School of Public Administration.

Co-Chairman Peter V. Ueberroth and other Rebuild L.A. board members have conceded that their role is still evolving. Moreover, Rebuild L.A. is struggling to sort out a host of organizational problems--including the difficulty of securing a consensus on key decisions among its three co-chairmen.

Yet it is clear that city officials are looking to the organization to deliver broad social and economic policies.

“I see the city doing the pieces and Rebuild L.A. coming up with the plans, taking the broader view,” said Deputy Mayor Linda Griego. “We have to deal with people on a day-to-day basis and can’t put them off by saying: ‘We’re working on a plan.’ We have to deal with a constituency that has some immediate needs.”

But urban experts warn that some sort of extragovernmental super-agency--if that indeed is where Rebuild L.A is headed--will not work.

“If this is the city’s position, it is very discouraging,” said Pisano, who headed the Los Angeles 2000 Committee, a blue-ribbon panel that made a three-year study of various city problems. “How much can we expect from this small, fledgling organization? The city, run by elected officials, has the responsibility to shape the future of Southern California.”

To a large degree, experts say, Los Angeles is suffering from longstanding ills that were forced to the surface and crystallized in a moment of social upheaval.

Some longtime city observers cite a concentration of economic power among a relative handful, still others to the sometimes disorienting demographic changes that have swept Los Angeles.

Pisano contends that the city has never been able to grasp the need for visionary planning. “There has never been the kind of long-term development of economic strategies,” she said.

Scott said: “We need an industrial policy for Los Angeles. Part of the way of dealing with the problems of South-Central has to be through a metropolitan, regional approach that will be much more activist about the problems of creating jobs, training workers and educating the work force.”

Wright warns that Los Angeles must not repeat the mistakes of a quarter century ago, when city leaders grappled with the aftereffects of the Watts riots.

“There was an attempt to bring about comprehensive community planning,” he said. “We created a community congress and there was a proliferation of community block clubs that became almost a quasi level of government and had great impact on school boards and the City Council.

“But the essence of community spirit evaporated,” Wright said. “Politics got involved.”

Already, many community organizers say, there is a rapidly diminishing sense of urgency about urban recovery among the vast majority of the public that was jolted only indirectly by the civil unrest of late April and early May.

What is most evidently lacking, virtually all observers say, is the kind of political leadership that could corral the city’s wildly varied resources and provide a common vision for the future.

“Right now we’re living in a vacuum,” said Joel Kotkin, a journalist who has written widely on Southern California social and economic issues. “There is a sense that the city and county bureaucracies and the ruling class have failed and that Rebuild L.A. has squandered an enormous amount of energy.”

While urban specialists fault all the city’s power bases for the governmental inaction, many say that Bradley--long a visible symbol of Los Angeles’ loftiest aspirations--has been conspicuously absent from the post-riot debate.

The mayor left on an overseas trip to promote tourism without responding to interview requests.

In announcing that he will not seek reelection, Bradley said that rebuilding the city will be a priority during the remainder of his term. The mayor’s supporters contend that he has spearheaded such efforts on a variety of fronts, including working behind the scenes to lobby for federal funds.

But beyond vowing to work closely with Rebuild L.A., Bradley has not outlined an agenda for civic renewal. And it is increasingly apparent that Bradley’s post-riot performance will figure in next spring’s mayoral campaign, even in Bradley’s absence.

Woo, formerly a staunch Bradley ally, ascribes the perceived confusion in the rebuilding efforts to a “lack of political leadership. . . . If I had been mayor, I would have made myself the head of Rebuild L.A. so that people could hold me accountable.”

Woo has outlined a slate of post-riot initiatives, including a proposal to consolidate about 20 economic development programs in the city to create a more favorable business climate.

But--like much post-riot activity--Woo’s has been a single, isolated call to action.

Other council members are working on other, seemingly unrelated fronts:

* Joel Wachs, also a mayoral candidate, has proposed the formation of neighborhood councils to develop economic goals and involve citizens in governance.

* Mark Ridley-Thomas has chaired the council’s Recovery Committee, but the panel has yet to develop any long-range strategies for rebuilding.

* Ruth Galanter’s office has helped coordinate the efforts of a community improvement group that sprang up in the Crenshaw area after the riots.

* Mike Hernandez has called on his colleagues to focus city spending on zones with the greatest need, warning that blighted areas of Los Angeles “are potential riots waiting to happen.”

That the council’s actions have seemed fragmented is no accident, urban experts say.

“The council reflects the fragmentation that has happened in the city as a whole, compounded by the fact that at least half of them want to run for mayor and are jockeying in an effort to position themselves advantageously,” Pisano said.

Critics say that although City Hall has attempted, as best it could, to deal with the immediate aftereffects of the riot, even many of those short-term efforts have lacked cohesion and purpose.

In response to a reporter’s requests, city officials released a list of “accomplishments and programs currently being coordinated by the mayor’s office” in connection with the rebuilding effort.

The programs cited include assisting riot victims in applying for federal aid, expediting the process of obtaining building permits for riot victims, helping to coordinate the $19-million federal Weed and Seed Program, and establishing a multiethnic construction consortium to raze hundreds of riot-damaged buildings.

Griego said such efforts are the most practical means to help those hurt by the riots and to encourage business growth. City leaders, she argued, are being unfairly blamed for entrenched economic problems that require federal and state action. “We’ve lumped the civil disturbance, the recession, the downsizing of the defense industry all in one and said we must come up with a cure-all,” she said. “But there is no cure-all.”

In fact, many community activists agree with her that, in the long view, government alone is not likely to be the city’s savior. One of the most promising signs in the post-riot maelstrom, they say, is the emergence of a host of private groups and individuals working to fill the leadership void.

A Korean-American group has set out to assess the needs of 2,000 of its members in an effort to obtain aid. A coalition of neighborhood developers is holding public hearings in low-income communities for the same reason. Wright, the SBA administrator, is planning an economic summit.

In all these cases, organizers say they acted because no one else seemed to be doing anything.

“What our community groups are telling us is that it is no use meeting with politicians, because everything has gotten so politicized that they can’t address substantive policies,” said Bong Hwan Kim of the newly formed Korean-American Interagency Council. “So we have been put in the middle, having to find out how the system works and figuring out which problems are systemic or structural or regulatory.”

Many urban experts believe that Los Angeles residents will have to wait a little longer for answers, while continuing to navigate their day-to-day lives in a city teetering between further discord and great multicultural promise.

“If we’re lucky, the mayoral campaign will be about vision. And if we are smart as a people, we will vote for the candidate who has the persistence to carry that vision through,” Pisano said. “But I’m not sure we’re going to have that clear conversation among ourselves that’s so badly needed anytime soon.”