Decisive Style, Ties to Business Mark Riordan’s Record in Public Service

As a Los Angeles city commissioner, Richard Riordan was the same imposing figure across the negotiating table that he is as a private attorney and businessman--stubborn, mercurial, decisive, but too rushed to analyze for too long.

Riordan brought boardroom-style management to his public service: He said what was on his mind, got fed up with bureaucratic inefficiency and wanted the facts fast so he could vote and move on. He left flowery public speeches, ceremony and handshaking for somebody else.

Although he is running for mayor as a City Hall outsider, the 63-year-old multimillionaire has had one foot in government for a decade. While most of the campaign scrutiny has focused on his extensive business dealings, Riordan’s record on the Recreation and Parks Commission and the Coliseum Commission provides some revealing insights into how he would act as mayor.

Riordan’s success in making money made him a well-respected negotiator on the commissions. But his vast business connections also at times overlapped with his public duties. In at least one case, Riordan negotiated on the city’s behalf with a businessman linked to Riordan’s own private interests. In another, clients of his law firm sought to bid on a deal that Riordan helped put together.

Riordan was not interviewed for this story because he was in New York for his mother’s funeral. His campaign director, William Wardlaw, said Riordan never acted improperly as a commissioner and would be sensitive to conflicts of interest if elected mayor.

“He’ll put everything in a blind trust,” said Wardlaw, who has estimated Riordan’s personal fortune at $100 million. “He’ll resign from his law firm. . . . Every step will be taken to make sure there is not even an appearance of potential conflict.”

A blind trust controlled by an impartial trustee would manage Riordan’s extensive assets. Until all the assets are reinvested, however, experts in ethics law said Riordan would still be required to disqualify himself from situations where he had a financial interest.

Riordan’s public role as a commissioner began during the upheaval of 1984 when then-Deputy Mayor Tom Houston replaced most of the city’s 175 citizen commissioners in an attempt to revitalize Mayor Tom Bradley’s Administration. One of Bradley’s biggest campaign contributors, Riordan joined other high-powered professionals on the parks commission to add some bite to a body that had been regarded by some as being passive and lightweight.

Riordan was absent from his first parks commission meeting, on Sept. 20, 1984, and attended about 65% of the meetings for the next eight years. He was late to the second meeting, a pattern that continued and occasionally made Riordan the target of his colleagues’ jokes.

As a parting gift at his final parks meeting, Riordan’s colleagues presented him with a clock--a common going-away present but one that took on special significance in Riordan’s case. “He was not the most conscientious member we’ve ever had, but he came to meetings when he could and he did get involved in some complicated outside negotiations,” said James Hadaway, who retired last year as general manager of the city parks department.

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani sent a warning letter to Riordan in 1991, telling him to improve his attendance, which had dipped below the 75% threshold that the mayor had set.

According to Fabiani, a fierce Riordan critic who is backing City Councilman Michael Woo for mayor, Bradley had already decided not to reappoint Riordan to a third term as a parks commissioner when Riordan resigned last June to run for mayor. Bradley would not comment for this story.

Wardlaw acknowledged that Riordan missed commission meetings, but said he spent hundreds of hours in negotiating sessions.

While on the commission, Riordan had some tussles with parks department staff members who were not used to having a commissioner so actively involved.

In one instance, Riordan’s connections made an employee uncomfortable. According to two city officials, Riordan asked a high-level employee to play golf with a friend of Riordan’s who was interested in bidding on future city golf course projects. The employee complained to his boss, saying that becoming personally involved with a potential bidder would be inappropriate. The golf game never took place. Wardlaw said Riordan has “no recollection of a golf buddy who was interested in future city golf projects.”

As a parks commissioner, Riordan could be a blunt-spoken leader not afraid of making tough calls. During his tenure, he got a taste of angry residents’ opposition, the confinements of bidding procedures and the power of the City Council.

Riordan also met face-to-face with Woo, his future mayoral rival.

In 1990, Woo wanted the city to purchase a 63-acre canyon in Studio City; the money was to come from a trust fund set up for a Hollywood park. Although Woo has portrayed himself as the candidate of the inner city and has attempted to paint Riordan as a right-winger, roles seemed somewhat reversed this day.

It was Riordan who questioned Woo’s plan, expressing concern that raiding the trust fund would take money away from a park serving inner-city residents and divert it to more well-to-do residents. Woo, who ultimately prevailed, promised not to overlook the inner city.

There were instances when Riordan’s considerable private philanthropy extended to his commission role. He donated some computers to the parks department, for instance. During meetings, he also focused attention on the poor--pushing for soccer fields on the Eastside, insisting that commissioners include South-Central Los Angeles in a tour of recreation facilities and backing a department effort to shift more resources to troubled inner-city parks.

From 1985 to 1992, Riordan did double duty as one of the parks commission’s representatives on the separate Coliseum Commission. He was prominent in the negotiations for the privatization of the Coliseum and Sports Arena and the retention of the Spectacor limited partnership as manager of the facilities.

His role in keeping the Raiders in Los Angeles was less clear-cut. After starting as a major negotiator, he was replaced as the city’s point man because some viewed him as being too acerbic. In his campaign, however, Riordan has said he played a significant role in keeping the Raiders.

Riordan, as president of the Coliseum Commission, displayed a tough, public negotiating style that alienated Raiders team owner Al Davis--although not as much as a previous Coliseum Commission president, developer Alexander Haagen, had. As a result, in July, 1990, Bradley reappointed labor leader William Robertson, a previous longtime commissioner with close ties to Davis, and he took over the lead role in the talks for the commission.

Riordan’s general philosophy, one that many expect to continue into City Hall if he becomes mayor in Tuesday’s election, is that the public sector too often lags behind the private. One of his campaign centerpieces has been the proposal to lease Los Angeles International Airport to fund more police. He has also talked of putting garbage collection services out to bid.

“He just believes that private business can do it better,” said Hadaway, former head of the parks department. “To him, bureaucrats are generally lazy, while businessmen like him are bright and hard-working.”

But businessmen also bring potential conflicts of interest. Several times, Riordan sought the advice of the city attorney’s office on whether he could participate in decisions; at least three times he was told not to. But in a Riordan-negotiated deal involving the city’s birthplace, Olvera Street, Riordan did not seek a legal opinion.

In that case, Riordan was assigned in April, 1987, to negotiate with real estate developers who wanted to restore the Pico-Garnier block, a group of historic but decaying buildings that stand on city land across a broad plaza from Olvera Street’s curio shops and restaurants.

“On Pico-Garnier, he volunteered himself,” said former commissioner Mary Nichols. “The commission more or less said, ‘You know these people, you know the issues, go ahead.’ ”

Off and on during the next three years, Riordan negotiated on the city’s behalf with Los Angeles restaurateur Robert J. Morris and Santa Monica businessman Albert T. Ehringer. The two businessmen were general partners in the Old Los Angeles Co., a firm that already had an exclusive 25-year lease with the city to redevelop the Pico-Garnier block into restaurants, offices, shops and museum space.

Morris and Ehringer had approached the city to renegotiate financial terms and were seeking a 25-year lease extension at the time Riordan got involved. “He was very involved in the lease negotiations,” Wardlaw said.

But as the negotiations neared an end, Riordan got to know the principals as more than just a part-time city official. Documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show Riordan’s venture capital firm and his law firm had extensive business dealings with Morris and his companies beginning in the fall of 1989, shortly before the negotiations drew to a close in April, 1990.

The documents say Riordan Venture Management was involved in brokering a leveraged buyout that allowed Morris, a business associate and a group of investors to buy the popular Gladstone’s 4-Fish Restaurant on the beach in Pacific Palisades and another restaurant in Beverly Hills. Riordan’s law firm represented the new investors in a company called California Beach Restaurants, Inc., which included Riordan’s three grown children.

In an interview last year on an issue unrelated to the mayor’s race, Riordan confirmed that “my children are part owners of Gladstone’s and they bought it about a year ago. A company called California Restaurants of which they own, I’m just guessing, 5% each. . . . Or maybe not even that much, maybe 3% each.”

Wardlaw said Riordan assisted in financing his children’s interest in the restaurants.

The SEC documents indicate that Riordan’s venture capital firm was to receive $50,000 for its role in brokering the deal. In addition to representing the investors, Riordan’s law firm, Riordan & McKinzie, later provided legal advice to Sea View Restaurants, a subsidiary of California Beach Restaurants.

Riordan did not disclose his business relationship with Morris and his restaurant companies when the controversial Pico-Garnier lease extension he negotiated came before the parks commission in April, 1990. He was absent when the vote was taken. The deal was unanimously approved by his colleagues but became embroiled in a bitter fight over the future of Olvera Street and was never ratified by the City Council.

In a financial disclosure statement filed with the city Ethics Commission in February, 1991, Riordan said he received more than $10,000 in consulting fees from Sea View Restaurants in 1990.

The city parks department’s conflict-of-interest code requires disclosure and disqualification of commissioners who have any investment in or have received income from “any person or business entity which is, within the past 12 months was, or proposes to become a concessionaire, tenant or subtenant of the department.”

But Wardlaw said that Riordan had no economic interest in the Pico-Garnier decision and that “throughout most of (the negotiating period) he had no business relationship with Mr. Morris.”

The city attorney’s office was not asked to render an opinion on the legality of Riordan’s role in the matter. Officials there refused to speculate Thursday on what advice they would have given him.

In another case also involving Olvera Street, Riordan was involved in discussions on the preparation of a request for proposals to restore and redevelop the historic Mexican marketplace.

After numerous meetings over a period of months, Riordan again was absent when the bitterly contested issue came to a vote in June, 1990. This time, after consulting the city attorney, he sent a terse letter to his fellow commissioners, advising them that he “may have a remote conflict of interest” concerning the request for bids on Olvera Street.

Riordan said he learned “in the last few days” before the vote that one of his law firm’s clients might bid on the Olvera Street project.

Under the circumstances, Riordan wrote that “it is prudent” that he “not be present and vote on this matter.” With Riordan absent, the commission approved the request for bids, despite opposition from a vocal group of Olvera Street merchants and their supporters.

A bitter rift between two powerful Eastside politicians, Councilman Richard Alatorre and then-Councilwoman Gloria Molina, stopped the bidding process.

Although there were no suggestions of a conflict of interest, controversy also arose after Riordan negotiated a deal with a business seeking to operate the city’s Equestrian Center in Griffith Park. An angry Councilman Joel Wachs later rewrote the deal, saying that the original contract did not extract enough benefits for the city. While pushing the rewritten contract through the council earlier this year, Wachs said: “Riordan was ready to give away the store.”

Wachs, a former mayoral candidate who is currently backing Riordan, now refuses to comment on the matter.

Riordan’s campaign has said that Riordan made the best deal possible.

Just as significant as Riordan’s individual dealings was his personal style in approaching his public sector work. On negotiating matters, other commissioners often deferred to Riordan. He earned a reputation as a fierce negotiator who could grasp complex matters quickly.

If Riordan’s mayoral tenure is like his past public performance, Riordan would not be a mayor who puts off decisions for another day. Those who have worked with him in City Hall say Riordan will handle broad policies and leave the details to his staff.

“He’ll make decisions that involve a lot of money after a two-hour meeting,” said attorney Stan Sanders, a colleague of Riordan’s on the parks and Coliseum commissions who is now backing his mayoral bid. “That decisiveness is going to startle people.”

Some, however, criticize Riordan for studying issues on the fly, arriving at meetings without having researched issues thoroughly. One city staffer described him as restless, nervously doodling on a legal pad during meetings and anxious to cut through the minutiae and vote.

“He thinks he’s got a sixth sense,” the staffer said. “He’ll say, ‘Let’s do it this way.’ And then it’s on to something else. He doesn’t agonize.”

But Riordan could be effective, some said, even if he was learning the details as he went along. On the Coliseum Commission, several of those closely involved in the private talks praised his work.

“He at one time successfully compromised (on) a whole bunch of points,” said promoter Irving Azoff, who was involved in the Raiders talks. “I thought he was a facilitator in a general way. He didn’t really grasp all the fine points. When I was present in his talks with Davis, he talked in generalities, painting a picture with a broad brush.”

Those who know Riordan still speculate why the busy lawyer--who was involved in numerous corporate boards and carried around telephone messages by the handful--took on the commission duties.

He did not need the Greek Theater or Coliseum tickets, which some commissioners relish. He already had access to decision-makers and certainly didn’t need the $50 a meeting. Some say the decision laid the groundwork for his mayoral bid a decade later.

“He was on Recreation and Parks for the same reasons he’s running for mayor,” Sanders said. “Sometime in the early 1980s he decided that business dealings no longer satisfied him. He decided to delve into the public arena.”

Times staff writer Kenneth Reich contributed to this story.