L.A. Needs More Than Simplistic Stump Speeches

Candidates make everything sound so easy.

At least our mayoral candidates made the solution to Los Angeles’ financial crisis sound simple at Tuesday’s mayoral forum in the San Fernando Valley.

City broke? Can’t afford more cops? Richard Riordan will fix it by leasing the airport and inviting private trash haulers to low-bid the city’s municipal garbage collectors. This is Riordan’s Plan A, and if doesn’t work, he said, he’ll have a Plan B, a Plan C, or, at last resort, a Plan D.

His opponent, Councilman Michael Woo, was just as simplistic. Cut down the size of mayoral and council staffs. Consolidate. Knock heads. Remove fat. Ban waste.

This is the way of political campaigns. They are exercises in easy answers, heavy on promise and symbolism, most often delivered through negative advertising.

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While the candidates have been engaged in this kind of rhetoric, City Council President John Ferraro, Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky of the council’s finance committee and City Controller Rick Tuttle have been grappling with the city’s financial crisis in a political battle that has nothing to do with the easy solutions offered in the mayoral campaign. Speeches and promises don’t help in this fight.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 proposes shifting $2.6 million in state aid from cities, counties and other local government agencies to school districts. He has told local government to make up the loss by imposing a half-cent sales tax increase. This would replace the state’s temporary sales tax increase, which expires July 1.

City officials have said that Los Angeles may lose up to $350 million if the Wilson plan goes through and county voters, who will be asked to decide on the increase, don’t go along with it.

Granted that public servants exaggerate when faced with a loss of funds, but a reduction of that size in a city budget of $3.9 billion would mean substantial cuts in parks, libraries and other services if the city is to maintain present levels in police and fire protection and garbage collection.

“The $350 million means we will have to cut everything else to maintain police, fire and sanitation,” Ferraro told me.

Today he and Yaroslavsky are scheduled to fly to Sacramento for another visit with the state officials who will decide L.A.’s fate.

First, the two council members will have to mobilize the city’s legislative delegation, which is torn between pressures from Sacramento and home.

Ferraro and Yaroslavsky are veteran Democratic pols, with close associations with Senate and Assembly powers. The intricacies of Democratic alliances help. In a similar crisis last year, for example, Yaroslavsky’s friendship with Westside-Valley Assemblyman Terry Friedman helped fashion an alliance between city officials and state lawmakers from L.A.

But it won’t be easy. Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown agrees with Republican Gov. Wilson on the need to shift aid to schools from cities and counties. Brown has a lot of power with the Los Angeles Democratic legislators. And a friend of his told me the public pressure from L.A. is antagonizing the Speaker, rather than putting him in a compromising mood.

Even suggesting that the state raise its taxes may not help. The city would be confronted with Wilson’s no-new-tax pledge and with dozens of special interests that fear new taxes and have been protected through their lobbyists and campaign contributions. The City Council got a dose of such influence last year when it tried to persuade the Legislature to give the city authority to levy a business tax on banks and savings and loans.

The city is not alone. It’s working closely with Los Angeles County, which hasn’t happened much in the past. Sheriff Sherman Block and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti are writing law enforcement disaster scripts, warning of jail closings and prosecutor layoffs. The scripts are designed to scare our legislators.

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When the new mayor takes office next month, he will be thrust into the middle of this fight. He’ll be on the plane to Sacramento with Ferraro, Yaroslavsky, Tuttle and the rest of the L.A. crew. He’ll be across the table from suspicious Willie Brown and stubborn Pete Wilson, negotiating line by line, trading threats and cutting deals.

It will be the new mayor’s first test. If the two candidates had talked about the coming battle, and how they’ll deal with it, it would have been much more relevant--and more interesting--than the rehashed campaign speeches they offered in the Valley on Tuesday.