Riordan to Give Freer Rein to Top Bureaucrats

Top city bureaucrats will be given freer rein to run their departments, but they also will be held more accountable for results, Mayor-elect Richard Riordan and his advisers told a group of about 30 department heads Monday.

The unusual “board meeting” between Riordan and city department heads follows campaign promises by the multimillionaire businessman to instill tough management standards at City Hall.

Riordan, who will be sworn in Thursday, said afterward that he got “a great feeling from the departments that they want to get together. I think there is a great freshness in the air in Los Angeles.”

And, true to boardroom style, Riordan sat back like a corporate CEO while his new chief of staff, Bill McCarley, ran the meeting and another top adviser, UCLA management professor William Ouchi, outlined his thoughts on restructuring city government.

Ouchi told the department heads that Riordan would like citizen commissioners who oversee most city operations to meet less often and to meddle less in day-to-day government functions, according to several participants in the closed-door meeting.

McCarley told the bureaucrats to get used to visiting the mayor’s conference room frequently for substantive discussions among many departments. The mayor-elect’s staff said they hope that bringing the officials together will make them less likely to defend parochial interests at the expense of better overall organization for the city.

Participants in the meeting said retiring Mayor Tom Bradley tended to meet with top city staff individually, if at all.

Ouchi said Riordan hopes to make the department heads “engines of change” in the government. “He will be very clear about what he expects in the way of results, and he will be very clear in holding people accountable,” Ouchi said.

The officials were generally receptive to the Riordan team’s ideas, although Delwin Biagi, director of the Bureau of Sanitation, reported to the mayor-elect that city trash collectors are uneasy about the incoming Administration.

Riordan has proposed that the city hire a private firm to collect trash, leading to concerns that city employees would be laid off or transferred to the new firm and have their pay cut.

“There is uncertainty about the future,” Biagi said after the meeting. “Our employees have questions.” But Biagi said Riordan assured him, as he has stated in the past, that city employees would not be laid off to complete the privatization.

The meeting was held at the Biltmore Hotel and was paid for from a special $100,000 city transition account, which is being funded by private donations.

Most of the transition funds have gone to pay salaries of Riordan transition team staff members, a number of whom are expected to serve on the new mayor’s City Hall staff.

More than $93,000 in donations, rounded up by Riordan campaign fund-raising consultant Alice Borden, had been collected as of Monday, including $20,000 from the oil company Arco.

“It’s a major change after so many years. We want it to go smoothly,” said Arco spokesman Albert Greenstein. “We are a major player. . . . We are the largest corporation based in Los Angeles.”

Other contributions have come from Riordan campaign supporters, business executives and firms with business ties to City Hall.

Those making $10,000 donations were: AECOM Technology, a Los Angeles civil engineering firm that has worked on city projects; Latham & Watkins, a downtown law firm that fields several City Hall lobbyists; Public Storage, which operates rental storage facilities, and Selim K. Zilkha of Los Angeles, an executive with a Houston-based oil and gas production company.

International media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a Riordan supporter; Paula Kent Meehan, the chief executive of Redken Laboratories, and Louis W. Foster, chairman of 20th Century Industries, each contributed $5,000.

Some preliminary plans for Thursday’s mayoral transition, the first in two decades, were also released Monday.

The festivities will begin with a 10 a.m. concert on City Hall’s south lawn, followed by the 11 a.m. inauguration.

The concert will include Chinese lion dancers, big band music, folk music from the Andes and Mexico and gospel choral music.

A tribute to Los Angeles theater, including “Phantom of the Opera” star Davis Gaines, will follow. The concert will conclude with a performance by the Children of the World Choir. Each member will be dressed in a costume representing his or her cultural heritage.

The inauguration ceremony will feature 14-year-old opera singer Laurie Rubin performing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” She will be accompanied by the Los Angeles Police Concert Band.

The ceremony will conclude with Broadway star Leslie Uggams singing “America the Beautiful.”