Inner City Still Mostly on Outside at City Hall

With more than 70% of his City Hall commissioners announced, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has been drawing appointees heavily from relatively affluent areas--a pattern that is likely to worsen the underrepresentation of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods.

During the city’s post-riot soul-searching, critics complained that the commissions that oversaw basic municipal services under former Mayor Tom Bradley were out of touch with life in the inner city because too few commissioners lived there.

Despite Riordan’s pledges that his Administration will reflect the diversity of the city, those traditional geographic imbalances appear to be growing.

Of 167 commission appointees announced by Riordan as of Sept. 3, 98 of them--about 59%--reside in comparatively well-to-do neighborhoods scattered across the Santa Monica Mountains, the Westside and parts of the San Fernando Valley--all areas where the new mayor enjoyed strong voter support last June, records show. Just 26 appointees, about 16%, came from an area of similar population that stretches from Downtown through riot-scarred South-Central Los Angeles to the Harbor.

Moreover, one-third of Riordan’s announced appointees live in just two of the city’s 15 council districts--upscale and heavily Anglo areas spanning the hillsides from West Los Angeles and Pacific Palisades to Encino and Tarzana. By contrast, fewer than 6% of the new mayor’s appointees come from two council districts of equal population in South-Central Los Angeles.

The full profile of Riordan’s appointees, including their ethnicity, is not expected to be available for several weeks.

But the broad geographic pattern of his appointments is emerging clearly.

Grass-roots community activists and some urban studies experts argue that areas such as the Central City and South-Central Los Angeles have deteriorated, and residents have grown alienated, partly because inner-city neighborhoods are poorly represented on city commissions.

“It seems as if we’re being left behind,” said Robert Hunter, a building maintenance contractor who has lived in the Locke High School area of South-Central most of his life. Hunter has fought City Hall, sometimes unsuccessfully, for more youth programs and to keep liquor stores out his neighborhood. “We need something headed with someone in this neighborhood,” he said.

Commissioners who live in other areas of the city may be sympathetic, Hunter said, but they “don’t have to wake up facing this problem daily . . . the homeless begging for wine or liquor.”

UCLA professor Paul Ong, an urban planner who has studied the haves and have-nots in Los Angeles, agreed. “You can have people outside the area be strong advocates . . . but there is a limit to that. That’s not a substitute for being a member of a neighborhood. You don’t have the sense of urgency” about community problems.

Riordan has repeatedly pledged that his Administration will reflect the makeup of the city. He told The Times that his commissions will be responsive to all areas of the city, regardless of where the members live.

“I’m very proud of the commission appointments. I think we’ve gotten very diverse ethnic, religious, site orientation. . . . They have the interests of every part of the city at heart. “See what we do. South-Central’s going to be better. Every part of the city’s going to be better,” he said.

Supporters such as Councilman Joel Wachs have praised the diversity of Riordan’s appointments, citing as an example the new Police Commission. Appointees there include a rabbi from the Mid-City area, a prominent Anglo car dealer from the Valley, a Latino business executive from Eagle Rock who has served on a police gay advisory group, an African-American attorney from Baldwin Hills and a Latino attorney who moved to Downtown Los Angeles from San Marino in anticipation of his appointment.

On the other hand, all five of Riordan’s parks commissioners live on the Westside or in the San Fernando Valley.

City Hall critics have begun complaining openly about the lack of commissioners from low-income areas. “My concerns are that the mayor continues to divide this city through his appointments,” said Central City Councilman Mike Hernandez, who endorsed Riordan’s opponent, former Councilman Michael Woo. As of Sept. 3, only two appointees had come from Hernandez’s district.

“The haves are going to continue to tell the have-nots what’s in their best interest, without giving the have-nots a chance to participate in government,” Hernandez said.

Thus far, Riordan is tilting his appointments even more heavily toward the Westside and the San Fernando Valley than Bradley did, records show. Bradley’s Administration, despite the former mayor’s political roots in South-Central Los Angeles, also drew criticism for loading up commissions with Westside residents.

Robin Cannon, president of Concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles, said she had hoped that all the civic introspection after the civil disturbances, coupled with the election of a new mayor, would lead to more geographic equity in City Hall appointments.

“I thought it would be more of an opportunity for people of . . . different backgrounds to work together to make this a better city,” she said. “I just haven’t seen that happen. I’m still hoping.”

Riordan’s appointments are partly a function of his campaign pledges.

An Anglo Republican businessman who ran on a promise to field more police and make the city safer, Riordan received strong voter support from the suburban San Fernando Valley, an area that has also long complained of being shortchanged in City Hall appointments.

Bill Wardlaw, who headed the mayor’s transition team and has been overseeing appointments, acknowledged that he has focused intensely on finding more San Fernando Valley commissioners. “Mayor Riordan in the campaign made a commitment to try and address that frustration,” he said.

Thus far, Riordan’s appointees from four City Council districts wholly in the Valley account for 17% of his total, compared to about 11% under Bradley, records show. Wardlaw stressed that those figures may understate Riordan’s Valley appointments because a number of his commissioners live at the Valley’s edges and would not be included in those totals.

At the same time, Wardlaw sought to downplay the importance of geography in commission appointments when asked about the poorer, inner-city areas, most of which were carried by Riordan’s opponent.

“I don’t think you need to live in certain specific areas to have an appreciation for the problems that may be more prevalent in that area,” he said. “I have a hard time believing that an African-American commissioner from Pacoima is insensitive to South-Central.”

He said Riordan’s appointees were chosen from among “people who have been most active in the city.”

“Secondly, sometimes when people are working 60 hours a week just to make ends meet, they have less time for community activities. Unfortunately, there are a disproportionate number of people breaking their backs just to make ends meet in the southern and central parts of Los Angeles.”

Hunter and Cannon said there are many qualified residents, including retirees, in the inner city who could serve. But both speculated that those residents simply are not known to the city’s business and political elite. “They don’t look hard enough to find them,” said Cannon. “That’s why the system perpetuates itself.”

Wardlaw said he has been frustrated in finding qualified appointees from the Central City and South-Central who would be supportive of Riordan’s agenda, so the Administration is seeking to reach out to those areas in other ways. He noted that the Rev. E. V. Hill, a prominent African-American minister who backed Riordan, lives just outside the city limits, near Southwest Los Angeles, and cannot serve on a commission. But Hill has been named a special adviser to the mayor and is planning community seminars.

Like Riordan, Wardlaw argued that it is results that are important.

“When Dick Riordan is successful in fulfilling what he ran on, in public safety and economic development, that (will be) substantially more important to people of every part of this town. People would rather see 10 cops than 10 commissioners” in their area, he said.

Community activists such as Cannon argue that residents dealing with the brunt of some of the city’s worst problems are in a good position to help devise workable solutions.

Commissioners from other areas “don’t have a sense of the environment that people live in. You don’t have a sense of what they really want and how they would like to accomplish it. . . . That life experience . . . can balance the nature of the policy being set,” Cannon said.

Times staff writer Rich Simon contributed to this story.