City Hall Power Shifts to Eclectic, Pragmatic Team : Government: Emphasis for Riordan commissioners is on the bottom line. Fewer appointees are from urban core.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has substantially altered the contours of the city’s network of powerful citizen commissions--making them more white and suburban, more inclined to challenge embedded bureaucracies and, like the mayor himself, something of a political puzzle.

A Times examination of the most sweeping shake-up of mayoral appointees in nearly a generation shows that Riordan has tugged City Hall’s center of political gravity to the right with a new infusion of Republicans and bottom-line business managers who strongly support his three-pronged agenda--more police, greater government efficiency and a friendlier business climate.

Records also show that minorities and residents of the city’s vast, urban core have lost some of the ground gained under former Mayor Tom Bradley--prompting sharp criticism that the city’s first GOP mayor in 36 years is retreating on representation of the ethnic poor. White appointees have risen to 57%, up from 42% under Bradley and significantly higher than the 37% white population of the city.

At the same time, Riordan has displayed a flair for the politically unpredictable, mixing in a striking number of liberal Democrats and community activists--some of whom did not support him--with the new, more conservative voices accompanying him to City Hall, records and interviews show.

“The concept is . . . like ‘Back to the Future,’ ” said CSU Fullerton political science professor Raphael J. Sonenshein, who studies Los Angeles politics. “On the surface, it’s (former conservative mayor) Sam Yorty revisited. Until you get closer (and) realize that what he’s doing is far more interesting. It’s real eclectic . . . the part of what he does I find most promising.”

Indeed, Riordan, one of a wave of Republicans ascending to power in traditional big-city Democratic strongholds, appears to be experimenting with a new prototype of centrist urban leadership, some observers say. By putting street violence, government waste and business flight squarely at the top of City Hall’s agenda--and then reaching across ideological and, to some extent, ethnic lines in appointments--Riordan and his counterparts in other cities could be reconfiguring traditional large-city political alliances.

It is what New York columnist Jim Sleeper, writing recently in New Republic magazine, dubbed the “Rainbow II” model--a kind of post-liberal coalition that devalues political demographics and party affiliation in favor of what Sleeper calls “a can-do pragmatism and common civic identity.”

“It’s nonaligned . . . and that’s very, very vital in overturning the status quo,” said screenwriter-producer Gary Ross, the new Library Commission president. “And that’s coming from a liberal Democrat.”

A lot is riding on Riordan’s choices.

Under Los Angeles’ strong City Council system, the mayor’s web of appointments represents his greatest opportunity to project power. Some 40 city panels oversee services such as libraries, police and parks, and others regulate construction and new business permits.

Riordan is relying on his appointees to trim spending, expand the business tax base and deliver on his most important initiative--an unprecedented police force buildup that could cost $300 million per year by the end of his first term.

“I’m looking at them to be the ones that carry out (my) agenda,” the mayor said. “I wanted commissioners . . . who would set goals. Not just react to what was thrown at them by bureaucrats.”

Most commissioners are still getting their bearings, and early changes have been mostly symbolic. For example, virtually all of Riordan’s panelists are forgoing small per-meeting stipends, at an estimated annual savings of about $200,000. Some commission staffs have been thinned. And the much-criticized and costly globe-trotting by past appointees to the airport and harbor commissions has been curtailed. “It’s noticeably down,” said Tim Lynch, an aide to city Controller Rick Tuttle.

Bigger changes appear to be in the works. Commissioners are asking pointed questions on everything from how bills are collected and how contracts are awarded to why reviews of new business and development projects take so long.

“There’s no doubt about it,” said Warner Bros. executive Dan Garcia, a prominent Bradley Administration player who is serving on Riordan’s Airport Commission. “Things are very different. . . . They are trying to look hard at the functions of government to make them part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

Indeed, the new Airport Commission, led by a top Riordan policy strategist, attorney-developer Ted Stein, has set the early tone for the new priorities by engaging the airline industry in a major legal and political battle over higher landing fees, which officials hope to use for more police.

Elsewhere, appointees are exploring ways to consolidate operations, eliminate the full-time Public Works Commission, identify programs that may be candidates for competitive outside contracting, and recruit volunteers to assume some tasks.

Coursing through many of the new commissions is a swift undercurrent of skepticism about the city bureaucracy’s ability to manage itself.

“I don’t think government produces anything except grief,” said Planning Commissioner Robert L. Scott, a newcomer Republican attorney who describes himself as a “small ‘L’ libertarian.”

“Bureaucracies run on the idea that they’ll always grow. And they seem to produce less the more people (they have) working in a given department,” he said.

Among other things, Scott, who served as a public speaker for the Riordan campaign and chairs a group trying to break up the Los Angeles school district, is trying to sort out the city’s complex transportation planning apparatus, which sprawls over two and sometimes three agencies that are frequently at odds. “From what I’ve seen there is a lot of duplication,” Scott said.

City Retirement Board member William Doheny Jr., another Republican and third-generation member of an old Los Angeles oil family, had scant interest in Democratic-controlled City Hall politics--until his friend of 25 years entered the mayoral race. Doheny and his wife contributed $3,000 to Riordan’s campaign and Doheny later agreed to take his first municipal government post “sort of as a favor to Dick.”

A fiscal conservative and private money manager, Doheny has been dispatched to size up the city’s investment and borrowing practices to ensure that the city is getting competitive deals.

Department of Water and Power Commission President Dennis Tito, who sometimes bicycles with the mayor and helped raise campaign funds, met Riordan through volunteer work with the Los Angeles Archdiocese Education Foundation. A Republican and public pension consultant, Tito said he “wants to cut the fat without cutting the muscle” at the nation’s largest publicly owned utility.

“These are hostile takeovers,” said UC San Diego political science professor Steve Erie, who has studied Los Angeles politics. Riordan, who made millions on leveraged buyouts in the 1980s, is “bringing in the money managers to try and find how to squeeze the gooses that lay golden eggs.”

However, Riordan’s reach for commissioners extended well beyond his fiscal conservative GOP friends in the corporate world.

From interviews with dozens of appointees and a review of more than 200 commissioners’ resumes, an oddly scrambled portrait of Richard Riordan’s Los Angeles emerges.

Well-to-the-right Republican admirers of the mayor can be found side by side with die-hard Democratic activists.

There are his high-echelon acquaintances from the entertainment industry and the city’s ballroom charity circles. And there is the Catholic nun he befriended years ago, who teaches Eastside kids to read, as well as the public housing tenant he never met who was recommended by Councilman Richard Alatorre, a key Latino ally of the Administration.

Leaders of the old San Fernando Valley-based anti-busing movement found a home in the Administration. But so did confidantes of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), one of the most vocal advocates for black causes, whose fence-sitting during the campaign was seen as a plus for Riordan.

“Once you get beyond the pure racial issues, you have a very wide (political) spectrum,” said Garcia, the airport commissioner.

A broad-based consensus for action could emerge from the mix, but so could political chaos, particularly if the mayor is hesitant to impose the political discipline needed, observers say.

“It leads to consensus if he can define a single overriding purpose,” said national political commentator William Schneider. “What you do to build coalitions in this country is you take diverse groups and come up with something they can all agree on. It’s his job as mayor to define that overriding purpose.”

Beefing up the LAPD to combat street crime and clearing away obstacles to business have been the clear organizing principles of the Administration thus far.

But there are some rumblings of dissent. One liberal member of a key panel complained privately that some conservative Riordan appointees are too narrowly focused on helping business and cutting costs. They appear dismissive about issues such as advancement of minorities and employee morale, the commissioner said.

“It’s frustrating. . . . I think that I’m always going to be in the minority. . . . I’m sure (the balance on the commissions) was not haphazardly put together.”

Entertainment industry political activist Patricia Duff, who supported Riordan’s liberal opponent, Michael Woo, said she was pleased when the mayor recruited her for his Commission on the Status of Women--but a little worried about how she would fit in.

“I’m very impressed by (the) generous gesture” toward left-of-center viewpoints, Duff said. But she warned that liberals must be taken seriously or “it’s going to be his problem down the line. (Commissioners) can always express disagreement . . . and quit to his embarrassment. He’s taking the risk, frankly, not me.”

William Wardlaw, a member of Riordan’s political brain trust who played a key role in assembling the appointments, said some disagreements are inevitable, given the mix of people Riordan has brought together. But he stressed that, in aggregate, the new commissioners “carry with them . . . the Riordan agenda and a willingness to implement that.”

The tensions are more clear between commissioners and some managers and employee groups, who complain that the new arrivals are inexperienced, naive and searching for quick-fix solutions that may be unworkable in the complex world of government service.

“The bureaucracy is seen as the problem inherent,” complained one high-level city executive, who spoke only with a promise of anonymity.

Managers say they welcome Riordan’s pep talks about freeing department executives to experiment and run their own shops without the politicians’ micro-management of the past. But ultimately, they still know that they must answer to a City Council that has not only the power of the purse strings, but a well-developed appetite for second-guessing when things go awry.

Employee groups bristle at what they perceive as a kind of corporate raider approach by the mayor and his new commissioners. Everywhere, they seem bent on leveraging dollars out of services and assets to underwrite more police, union leaders say.

If the commissions play “to the gallery of citizen fear (over) lack of public safety . . . we will see our libraries and our parks and our streets and our fire inspection and other services go down the toilet,” said John Wyrough, a spokesman for the union that represents 7,000 city clerical and library workers.

The greater union worry is that lower-cost private contractors may be brought in to do civil service jobs. There has been no clear move yet toward privatization, but studies are moving ahead.

Just where Riordan will make progress, and where his agenda will collide most dramatically with the status quo, remains uncertain.

What is clear--and most immediately controversial--is the shift in ethnic and geographic representation on City Hall commissions.

African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans all have proportionately fewer appointees, records show. And Bradley, an African American whose political roots were in the inner city, had nearly twice as many appointees from the central, South-Central and Southwest areas of the city.

“Definitely a step backward,” said Richard Martinez, executive director of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, a leading Latino organizing group.

Riordan, whose voter base was 85% white, has tilted City Hall toward his prime constituencies in the middle- and upper-class enclaves of the Westside and the San Fernando Valley, records show.

Some political scholars say the commission lineup exposes what could prove to be the Achilles’ heel of the Riordan Administration--a subtle, political estrangement from the city’s poorest, neediest communities.

“I’m uneasy,” said Michael B. Preston, chairman of the USC political science department. “When people feel they are not adequately represented in the Administration, then they take their anger out in different ways.”

And the shrinkage in ethnic representation is exacerbated because many of Riordan’s ethnic appointees are not seen as advocates for the inner city, Preston said.

“He’s sticking to relatively white, high-status commissioners that are potentially out of touch,” said Sonenshein, of CSU Fullerton.

But the appointments also reflect the widening divide between the people who elect mayors and the people who are governed, Sonenshein and others say. Nearly three-fourths of voters in the June election were white, versus being 37% of the city’s population. In fact, 55% of those who voted for Riordan’s liberal, minority opponent, former Councilman Woo, were white, the Times Poll found.

Riordan maintains that he has done “a pretty good job” of reflecting the city’s diversity--a key campaign promise.

But he eschews any numerical yardsticks, including the city’s population. “I never even think in those terms. I want people who are doers . . . (who have) an attitude of solving problems for the whole city,” he said.

Riordan says his appointees have no shortage of commitment to any section of the city. “I want people who care about the inner city,” he said. “I want people who will make change there. They’ve gotten the raw end of it.”

Nonetheless, even some of Riordan’s minority appointees acknowledge that the overall alignment of commissions seems to spotlight potential weak spots.

“Clearly there needs to be a little more thought given to how we relate to (the African American) community,” said Community Redevelopment Agency Commissioner Cynthia McClain Hill, a black investment banker and political commentator.

But Bradley, despite being praised for opening City Hall to more minority appointments, was bitterly attacked in his latter years in office for allegedly ignoring the ethnic poor and being out of touch with neighborhoods that erupted in rioting and looting in 1992.

Riordan’s commission appointments may be out of tune with the city’s changing demographics, but the political reality is that they may well be in harmony with the will of the voters, some analysts say.

“An election is a choice,” said Schneider. “They chose between Woo, who promised ethnic diversity, and Riordan, (who pledged) to improve the city economically and in terms of physical safety. That’s (Riordan’s) mandate.

“If they didn’t want to see more white Republican men in the Administration they wouldn’t have voted for Riordan.”

* THE NEW PLAYERS: A look at appointees, goals. B1

Ethnic Shift

Under Mayor Richard Riordan’s Administration, minority representation on city commissions has declined, compared to the numbers under former Mayor Tom Bradley.

RIORDAN COMMISSIONERS White: 57% Black: 15% Latino: 14% Asian: 8% Other*: 6% * Or not available

BRADLEY COMMISSIONERS White: 42% Black: 24% Latino: 18% Asian: 11% Other: 4%