Post-Riot Reforms

Thank you for reminding us that our Los Angeles is “A City With No One in Charge” (editorial, Oct. 17). Unfortunately you put the spotlight on only a portion of the problem. Even if the special investigating panel headed by William Webster and Hubert Williams should present us with an ideal solution to the flaws in the relationship between “a mayor without adequate power” and “the awesome City Hall bureaucracy” Greater Los Angeles will still be a city with no one in charge. As long as police and fire protection, together with many other government functions, remain pawns of the geographic and administrative gerrymandering of our contiguous metropolitan area, lawlessness and violence will have the advantage.

The L.A. 2000 report drew attention to the anachronism of our unsynchronized governmental systems. The two major ones--Los Angeles, the city, and Los Angeles, the county--were designed, respectively, in 1926, for a city of 1.2 million and in 1913, for a county of 600,000. If a recommendation for coordinating our metropolitan government is beyond the scope of the present special investigating panel members, they should at least endorse the L.A. 2000 recommendation that a governmental reconstruction commission be appointed by the state in order to bring governance of this metropolitan area up to date for the 21st Century. And if they fail to do it, The Times ought to take the initiative!

RABBI ALFRED WOLF, Director

Skirball Institute on American Values

American Jewish Committee

Los Angeles