RLA Will Cut Back From 4 Leaders to 1 : Recovery: Mayor’s office to join search for volunteer head of rebuilding agency. Unwieldiness has been problem.

In the latest shake-up in its short history, RLA is abandoning its four co-chair leadership and plans to appoint a single, unpaid volunteer with high-level corporate contacts to head the private organization, which was created as the city’s primary response to the 1992 riots.

A search for the new leader will be undertaken in conjunction with the office of Mayor Richard Riordan, who has raised questions about the unwieldy nature of the nonprofit agency, initially known as Rebuild L.A.

The mayor “has made it known for quite a while he believes there should be a single person heading up the organization and he has communicated that to the co-chairs,” said Co-Chairwoman Linda J. Wong. “And quite frankly that has been a consistent message from a number of different individuals.”

Riordan’s liaison to RLA, William Ouchi, said that the mayor has several candidates in mind for the job, but declined to name any.

The action Wednesday came at the first meeting of RLA’s new executive committee, a 13-member group appointed to help streamline the operations of the organization, which has a 96-member board of directors.

It also came less than two weeks after RLA’s staff announced that the oft-criticized agency will need to raise additional private contributions or public funds to stay afloat in 1995. According to a 13-month audit presented at RLA’s quarterly board meeting Oct. 28, 70% of the organization’s spending has gone for salaries and administrative costs.

After that meeting, the nonprofit organization’s top staffers declined to publicly divulge the salaries of any of its 30 paid employees. But this week, following additional requests from The Times, a salary breakdown was released that revealed that Co-chairman Bernard Kinsey is being paid a salary of $150,000 a year by RLA, with the other three co-chairs receiving up to $27,000 each.

The release of salary information had at least some bearing on the committee’s decision to appoint an unpaid volunteer to head the organization, Wong indicated. Hiring a volunteer for the top slot may result in savings of about $200,000 a year in salaries. During Wednesday’s executive committee meeting, Co-chairman Barry Sanders announced that he would resign effective at year’s end to resume his post as a partner in the Latham & Watkins law firm.

An ethnically diverse co-chair structure “was the right thing to do when we did it during a crisis atmosphere in our community,” Sanders said. “At this point, when the corporate community no longer calls us and we have to call them, it would be more effective to have a single leader with corporate connections.”

The other co-chairs, Kinsey, Tony M. Salazar and Wong, made no immediate announcements about their futures.

However, Kinsey, a private business development consultant and former Xerox Corp. vice president, said he would not be a candidate for the new job. And Wong, who made the motion to restructure the leadership, said the consensus of the executive committee is that “an outside individual” should be appointed to the post.

The action comes less than six months after the initial leader of RLA, Peter V. Ueberroth, resigned as co-chairman. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics czar, who was chosen by then-Mayor Tom Bradley to head the city’s recovery efforts after the devastating riots, had attracted both contributions and controversy with his optimistic pronouncements about the success of RLA.

Before his resignation, the organization said it had received commitments of more than $500 million from companies willing to invest in South-Central Los Angeles. Some major companies that RLA identified as intending to invest told The Times they had no such plans. RLA officials say the pledges later were met, although they have not made a public accounting.

The agency also has come under fire from critics who say it has failed to reach out sufficiently to grass-roots organizations. But with the addition of Wong, who joined the leadership last summer, RLA officials say they have strengthened their outreach to community groups.

Ueberroth, who along with the four current co-chairs is a member of the executive committee, said Wednesday’s move was an important step in helping the organization work more closely with the office of the current mayor.

“Mayor Riordan is showing strong, positive leadership in this city and today’s action helps streamline RLA so it can work more closely with his office,” Ueberroth said.

Last year, Ueberroth said that private contributions and a $3-million federal grant that RLA received during its formative stages would be enough for its five scheduled years of operation.

But that picture changed when the audit was released at the board meeting last month. No board members expressed concern at the session that 70% of the spending went for salaries and administrative costs and 17% for program services. Unlike many community organizations that implement programs to revitalize neglected neighborhoods, RLA is not program-oriented but seeks to stimulate investment in the inner city, several board members noted.

When asked after the meeting for the salaries of RLA employees, top staffers refused, with Kinsey saying, “I don’t think that’s germane.”

The salary breakdown released this week shows that Kinsey is being paid $12,500 a month by RLA. Sanders, who continued to be paid as a partner in his law firm, has received no compensation from RLA. Wong, former regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Salazar have each received about $2,300 a month in salary from RLA. Salazar is on loan from the urban development firm of McCormack Baron & Associates, from whom he receives additional compensation.

Kinsey said Wednesday his salary “may sound high to some people . . . but it was less than 50% of what I was making when I joined RLA.” Kinsey’s salary was set by Ueberroth before the other co-chair positions were created, Sanders said. The other salaries have been set by the team of co-chairs.

The executive committee set no deadline Wednesday for the hiring of the new executive, except to say that the process would be undertaken “as expeditiously as possible.”

“In view of the fact RLA was created in unusual circumstances and held to the public scrutiny we’ve been through for 18 months,” Wong said, “it’s extremely important whoever it is who comes in be above reproach. It sends a message to the public (that) the underlying motive of the new leader is to assist the entire community.”

In a written statement, Riordan praised the decision to seek a new czar with high-level corporate contacts.

“I support a streamlined and focused RLA with a single chair, targeted agenda and ethnically diverse policy-making executive committee,” the mayor’s statement read.

Mayoral adviser Ouchi said the new chair will likely have extensive experience in “capital formation” to attract investors to the riot zones.

In addition to the four current co-chairs and Ueberroth, the executive committee includes Arco Chairman Lodwrick M. Cook, Walt Disney Corp. President Frank G. Wells, restaurant owner Linda Griego, IBM Southern California General Manager James Steele, Chris-Craft TV division Public Affairs Director Marilyn Solomon, Gruen Associates managing partner Ki Suh Park, Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California Director Stewart Kwoh and RLA Chief Operating Officer G. Edward Smith.

Wednesday’s closed-session vote was 11 to 0, with Cook and Wells absent, Sanders said.

“It’s no coup d’etat,” Sanders said, “but 11 people speaking with one voice.”

Kwoh called the changes “very positive.”

“We’re in a transition phase where we’ve had some restructuring and we’re trying to redirect and refocus our work,” he said.

Griego, a deputy mayor under Bradley, said the changes make sense in order to enhance RLA’s relationship with the current mayor. “If we’re going to work together with the city, input from the mayor is really needed,” she said. “The tie needs to be strengthened.”

In the months since Ueberroth’s resignation, RLA has restructured its admittedly unwieldy board of directors into five working groups focusing on issues including business development, racial harmony, urban planning, community resource development and media outreach.

RLA also announced plans during the summer to scale back its initial focus of attracting major corporations to create inner-city jobs, a goal that was met with limited success. After several delays, RLA last month made its first major step in a strategy of focusing on small business development by opening a loan fund geared to small businesses seeking to expand.

Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this story.