Councilwoman Chick Learns the New Math After the Election

Police pledge: It sounded like Laura Chick, councilwoman-elect from the 3rd District, was hemming and hawing with the best of them at City Hall. And she hadn’t taken office yet.

During her successful effort to oust incumbent Joy Picus, Chick promised, if elected, to slash $100,000 from her council office budget, using the savings to hire a few more cops for the 3rd District.

It was just the kind of get-tough, penny-pinching pitch that endeared Chick to 3rd District voters and enabled her to push her former boss, Picus, a 16-year veteran, out of City Hall and back into private life.

But Tuesday, the 49-year-old Chick was talking a different story.

Her plan, she said, had been rendered largely un-doable.

Her $100,000-savings pledge was based on the expectation that her council office budget would be about $700,000, Chick explained.

But that number was obsolete, good for the 1992-93 fiscal year, not the 1993-94 one.

Due to City Hall’s straitened financial circumstances, each council member began the new fiscal year (which started Thursday) with a personal office budget of $640,882--a 4.8% decrease from last year’s amount of $672,629. From this pot, council members are to pay their staff and meet other expenses of running their offices.

Trimming $100,000 from her new, smaller budget would make it difficult, if not impossible, to hire the staff she needs to help her do her job, Chick said.

Maybe, Chick said, she can squeeze a $40,000 savings out of her office budget and supplement that with some kind of private fund-raising effort to reach her $100,000 goal.

Meanwhile, Chick says she can honor several other campaign pledges of self-denial, including her promise to forgo using a city-owned car. On the hustings, Chick inveighed against Picus’ use of a city-owned “luxury car.” And Chick said Tuesday she still intends to take a “hard look”--as promised--at trimming the number of cars assigned to her council aides. She said she thinks her staff can do with four instead of seven city-owned cars.

Up and running: Chick has assembled the core of her City Hall staff, having appointed four senior aides, including her chief deputy, as of last Tuesday.

But the San Fernando Valley’s other new face at City Hall, Richard Alarcon, elected to replace retiring lawmaker Ernani Bernardi, is moving at a slower pace.

In fact, two able Bernardi aides, David Mays and Gayle Johnson, the outgoing councilman’s chief deputy and press secretary respectively, have been asked by Alarcon to remain for up to a month on his staff until their replacements can be found.

Also assisting Alarcon in the transition is Al Avila, a City Hall veteran who last was chief deputy to Councilman Richard Alatorre. Thursday, the dapper Alarcon said he was in no great hurry to hire a chief deputy, claiming he wanted to wait in particular to see what committee assignments he draws.

Meanwhile, Chick, a moderate Democrat, has hired a crew with some strong conservative credentials.

First, there’s Karen Constine, former press secretary to Joan Milke Flores, a moderate Republican councilwoman (one of two City Hall lawmakers to bite the dust in June’s primary). Constine left Flores’ office to work as public affairs manager for Pacific Enterprises, the conglomerate that owns the Southern California Gas Co. and Pay ‘n Save drugstores.

Then there’s Eric Rose, who was press secretary to ex-Sen. Ed Davis and later did political consulting work for ex-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates. Rose has been picked to run Chick’s field office operations. He comes to Chick from Patrick Media Group, the billboard firm, where he was a registered City Hall lobbyist.

Chick has also picked up Diana Breuggemann, Woo’s former chief deputy, as a legislative aide, as well as Kenneth Bernstein as her planning deputy.

Of food and memories: The farewell party thrown Tuesday for City Hall’s most notable skinflint, Bernardi, ended up costing the city $4,800.

Yes, $4,800, said Ron Deaton, the city’s chief legislative analyst, who was asked to repeat the number several times Thursday just to make sure there was no miscommunication.

No question the Bernardi fete--with its cornucopia of edibles, including mountains of shrimp, cheeses and shish kebobs--easily earned a top rating from those who attended and clearly outclassed the more modest farewell parties for Picus and Flores.

“It was very un-Bernardi-like,” said one City Hall aide. “Gee, that’s a lot of money.”

But the Bernardi flak catchers stood their ground, denying the 81-year-old councilman had much say about the extravaganza. It was a party thrown for Bernardi, not by Bernardi, they said.

Meanwhile, city aides cleaning out the 32-year accumulation of relics stashed in Bernardi’s desk drawer in the council chambers turned up a rich trove that speaks of just how far the city has come over three decades, yet, also, how little it has changed.

For example, one find was a handsomely bound collection of monthly prayers delivered at council meetings by religious leaders in 1968. This small volume--which used to be published annually--is no more, the victim of budget belt-tightening that now does not even permit the City Hall phone directory to be updated annually.

Another find was all deja vu --this being a 1981 Bernardi statement urging the council to adopt a pilot program to privatize city trash collection. That measure stumbled into a minefield of political problems and died. Now, more than a decade later, Mayor Richard Riordan is proposing to resurrect such programs.

Finally, squirreled away in the desk was a color photo of Bernardi, in a reception line at City Hall, shaking hands with Prince Andrew--a.k.a. Randy Andy of the British Royal Family.