Riordan’s First Battle Is With Entrenched Bureaucracy

Mayor-elect Richard Riordan said during his campaign that Los Angeles will never be rebuilt until the city is safe.

But no one can make L.A. really safe as long as we have so much crime, poverty and racial tension. So Riordan set himself a lesser goal, adding 3,000 officers to the severely understaffed police force.

A second theme of his campaign also centered on riot reconstruction. He promised to convert City Hall from a slow-moving bureaucracy that hinders post-riot recovery into something as efficient as one of his corporate takeovers--although hopefully more compassionate.

Finding the money for more police might be easy compared to the task of streamlining city government.

Riordan is up against an entrenched bureaucracy, led by department heads with Civil Service job protection. To accomplish anything, he must dismantle or combine a multitude of government agencies that grew with little planning, supervision or long-range goals. As chief legislative analyst William R. McCarley, the City Council’s chief fiscal adviser, put it last November in a scathing report on the city’s riot recovery command structure:

“Notwithstanding budgetary commitments of over $550 million, 718 authorized positions, and the existence of more than 300 contracts for the administration and delivery of economic related services, the city’s economic development structure and apparatus has proven inadequate to meet the many challenges facing the city of Los Angeles. . . . Economic development programs appear to be fragmented. Overall responsibility and accountability are not clearly fixed.”

It was an excellent report. Naturally, it sat on the shelf.

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Early last spring, as the riot’s first anniversary was approaching, the same frustration was being expressed at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank.

Dan Garcia, senior vice president in charge of real estate planning and public affairs for Warner Bros., was unhappy with the city and with Rebuild L.A. (RLA), the post-riot recovery organization. Garcia, who once headed the city Planning Commission, is a member of the RLA board.

In a letter to fellow members of the RLA urban task force, Garcia wrote:

“A year after the event, there is a shocking lack of information about the condition of properties and businesses damaged as a result of last year’s civil disturbance. Elementary questions such as the number of people who have rebuilt, the percentage of people who have rebuilt, the types of businesses involved . . . have not been asked.”

Garcia had two of his staff, Mee Lee and Valerie B. Valdez, lead an effort to gather more information. So many agencies had a piece of the recovery action that Lee, a veteran of eight years in City Hall, found it difficult to obtain what she needed.

Ultimately the Garcia team was able to compile a series of color maps showing how efforts were scattered around the city, with seemingly little relation to areas hardest hit by the riots.

The maps were a disturbing illustration of how City

Hall had allowed economic development departments--now badly needed for riot reconstruction--to grow in a slapdash manner.

The Community Redevelopment Agency was organized to create a high-rise downtown. Later, several council members pushed through redevelopment areas in their own districts, mainly to provide city subsidies for construction projects by political friends.

Yet another agency, the Community Development Department, was set up as a funnel for federal grants. Even though federal grants have pretty well dried up, CDD is still around, headed by a general manager with Civil Service protection.

Then there’s the Planning Department, which theoretically is supposed be planning L.A.’s revival. The Garcia map shows that it operates mostly in affluent parts of the Westside and the San Fernando Valley, its technicians spending great amounts of time drawing up restrictive plans to satisfy politically powerful no-growthers.

The agencies got out of control during Mayor Tom Bradley’s 20 years at the helm. Naturally, the mayor didn’t like Garcia’s report. Neither did Rebuild L.A., which Bradley helped create. Garcia’s work headed for the shelves.

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But maybe not.

Remember the report I mentioned earlier by chief legislative analyst Bill McCarley? It covered the same concerns that Garcia discussed.

McCarley was one of those faceless City Hall technicians always churning out reports, and this one didn’t receive any special attention.

Well, McCarley got a face Friday. He was designated as Mayor-elect Riordan’s chief of staff.

The report that was ignored in November may well be part of the Riordan program in July. Garcia’s findings probably will be part of the mix as well.

McCarley wants all the fiefdoms conquered and placed under the control of one boss, accountable to the mayor and the City Council. Riordan can push it through with 10 votes on the 15-member City Council.

This is the real rebuilding effort, putting the city’s political power and financial resources--limited as they are--behind Angelenos who want to rebuild. “A spirit of remarkable resilience and energy remain in the city,” Garcia concluded from his look at the rebuilding effort. “Over 75% of the property owners expressed a desire to rebuild in the face of great uncertainty and apprehension.”

More police may relieve some apprehension. But only a streamlined City Hall can help property owners rebuild in the face of a bureaucracy that just slows them down.