Council Bars Lame-Duck Mayor From Filling Vacancies in Top City Posts

The Los Angeles City Council moved on Friday to clip the wings of lame duck Mayor Tom Bradley, passing a measure that prevents Bradley from appointing any top bureaucrats in the 3 1/2 months that remain in his 20-year reign.

In another swipe at the outgoing mayor, the council Friday attacked two decisions by the Bradley-appointed Airport Commission and voted to take jurisdiction over a coveted contract the commission had awarded.

The actions capped a week of Bradley-bashing in the City Council that began when lawmakers slammed the mayor for going on an expensive two-week tourism and trade mission to Europe.

The measure preventing Bradley from filling staff vacancies was designed to “send a message that we want the new mayor to have a chance to have some of his own people in there,” said City Council President John Ferraro, who proposed the measure.

Bradley’s appointments had already required City Council confirmation, but the action Friday puts the mayor on notice that the council wants to leave the positions open, Ferraro said.

Among the unfilled positions at City Hall are general managers for the personnel, animal regulation and transportation departments.

Bradley left Friday on the European trip. His spokeswoman, Vallee Bunting, called the ban on appointments “disturbing.”

“The mayor is stripped of his ability to make appointments and in some cases there may be things of pressing need,” Bunting said. “The mayor will be unable to get leadership in those positions.”

Council members said they might lift the hiring ban if Bradley can make a compelling case that city business cannot proceed otherwise.

The City Council cited two other reasons for leaving the posts open:

First, the delay might allow the new mayor to select top officials under new guidelines that would make it easier to discipline and fire them. Voters will consider the rules in a charter amendment that will be on the June ballot.

Second, positions could be consolidated or eliminated as part of ongoing budget talks.

“We’re not saying we’re going to eliminate positions,” Ferraro said. “But it’s always a possibility if the budget is as bad as we think.”

Meanwhile, in an extraordinary rebuke of the Bradley-appointed Airport Commission, the council Friday voted to take jurisdiction over one multimillion-dollar airport contract and fell one vote shy of doing the same with another contract.

The council’s actions followed a sometimes raucous session where several lawmakers openly criticized the commission’s handling of recent contracts and veteran Commissioner Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. responded by warning Councilwoman Joy Picus that her barbs could result in a slander suit.

“We are not here just to be sitting targets for someone,” an unusually testy Cochran later told reporters. “We are citizen volunteers. We are not political hacks.”

The badgering of the commission began when the council considered whether to block the commission’s plan to reopen competition for a contract to manage parking at three airports, including Los Angeles International. The airports make up the largest parking enterprise in the United States, with $52 million in annual receipts.

Originally, the contract seemed headed to a company whose partners include a longtime ally of Bradley. But when airport staff raised questions about that company, the commission voted to solicit new proposals from parking lot operators. That decision angered another company that seemed likely to win the contract because it had initially been unanimously recommended by the airport’s staff.

The conflict led council President John Ferraro, among others, to urge the commission to choose a parking lot operator from its original list.

“There is something rotten going on here and we need to get at it,” Picus said in urging that the council assert its jurisdiction over the contract.

But that plan, opposed by Mark Ridley-Thomas, Michael Woo, Zev Yaroslavsky and Mike Hernandez, fell one vote short of the 10 needed.

Moments later, however, the council voted 10 to 0 to take jurisdiction over an airport concessions contract worth an estimated $50 million. The action means it will have the next 21 days to examine guidelines on representation of women and minorities in companies seeking the contract.