Riordan Shows a Steady Hand in Leading a Rattled City

The big voice of Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg boomed through the small auditorium during Saturday’s meeting of the city’s Emergency Operations Board, which is coordinating earthquake disaster operations. Insistent, impatient, she demanded answers to questions asked by her Hollywood constituents.

Some of the department heads on the board seemed seemed unhappy with Goldberg and her constituents. Why didn’t they follow procedures, these new homeless living in parking lot encampments? Couldn’t they have called the proper city agency instead of Goldberg? The meeting became tense until Mayor Richard Riordan got everyone laughing. “If I lived in Hollywood, I’d call Jackie first,” he said, obviously convinced that the councilwoman knows how to get results.

Another scene from the same meeting: A transportation official reported that the program to ease traffic jams will be announced next week when plans are completed. No, said Riordan, we can’t wait. The people need information before they go to work Monday. “I think we should do it tomorrow,” he snapped. He said Sunday would be ideal because U.S. Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena would be in town and could preside at the news conference.

This is how Riordan played it at the meeting. In handling Goldberg’s barrage of questions, he smoothed rough edges and gently steered the L.A. team away from the feuds and turf wars that have damaged other disaster relief efforts. In pushing up the transportation plan, he was performing what he considers his main role in the current crisis, “to get people off their asses.”

Running meetings, cheering up the homeless, talking to President Clinton, working with Gov. Pete Wilson, snapping out orders, persuading enemies to sit down together, Riordan has given Los Angeles far more energetic and aggressive leadership than we had during the bleak and confusing days of the 1992 riots.

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The emergency board is a good illustration of the change in leadership since the days when the riot-torn city was led by two burned-out, feuding men, Mayor Tom Bradley and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates. The board is composed of the heads of key departments, such as Water and Power, Public Works, Fire and Police. In theory the panel is supposed to make sure the city departments are working efficiently--and together. But in the past it has functioned as a low-level debating club. Veteran City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky remembers attending meetings during the riots when a deputy police chief, rather than Gates, presided and Mayor Bradley was represented by a deputy. “There was chaos and disarray,” he said. “There was no leadership in that room.”

Since the day of the earthquake, however, Police Chief Willie L. Williams has presided over every meeting and Riordan has been at his side. “These two people have made the difference,” Yaroslavsky said. “We all know the tension between Bradley and Gates, the difficulty they had sitting next to each other. Williams and Riordan get along fine. Williams is an extreme professional. He doesn’t tolerate a lot of side comment or humor, he moves the meeting along. The mayor’s not grandstanding. There is mutual respect between the mayor and the department heads. It’s the bureaucrats who can make you or break you and I think the mayor has inspired confidence in them and earned their respect.”

Riordan took charge of the emergency team at the beginning. After he was awakened by the quake, he put on pants and a sweat shirt and drove Downtown from his Brentwood home in his Ford Explorer, stopping at the Wilshire Division police station.

The first member of his staff on duty was Geoffrey L. Garfield, assistant deputy mayor for public safety, who lives in a Bunker Hill apartment not far from City Hall. Garfield headed to the Emergency Operations Center in the City Hall East basement. Communications Director David Novak soon joined them. Novak called Riordan, told him how to get to the hard-to-find emergency center and went to work with Garfield on an emergency proclamation for the mayor to sign.

Riordan arrived at 5:30 a.m., talked to Williams, who was heading in from his San Fernando Valley home, and took charge of the emergency center. One of his first moves upon arriving was to order 250 breakfasts from his Downtown restaurant, the Pantry, to be brought to City Hall.

At 8:35 a.m., President Clinton called, and said he was sending out Pena, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

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In the days that followed, I watched a Riordan, who was far different than the nervous candidate I had covered during the mayoral campaign.

Campaigning is not his game. What he’s good at is running things, solving problems.

I saw an example of that Friday. I encountered him, press secretary Annette Castro and FEMA boss Witt leaving The Times, where they had met with the paper’s editors.

Riordan looked like a man in charge, not at all like he did during the campaign for mayor. Then, and through much of his six months on the job, he seemed overly cautious and ill at ease. His verbal gaffes mounted. During the fires, for example, he was criticized, even ridiculed, for sounding provincial when he said he was happy the flames missed L.A.

On Friday, he walked briskly across 1st Street toward City Hall, his coat open. You need a key to get into the 1st Street entrance and neither Castro nor the mayor had one. While we waited for someone leaving the building to open the door, I asked Riordan how he was doing. “I can’t believe I’m not getting tired,” he said.

Inside his office, there was a crisis. A 4 p.m. meeting between Los Angeles Unified School District officials and teachers union chiefs had blown up. Old enmities had interfered with what should have been an urgent session on getting the schools operating again. Riordan hit the phone, arranging for the federal government to help the district inspect damaged school sites and for the teachers and administrators to try harder to work together on the reopening.

Riordan also spent considerable time meeting with state and federal officials. On Thursday, after a meeting at Caltrans, he impulsively walked down the street to Wilson’s office and talked to him about delays in getting traffic moving. Riordan emerged from the meeting with the job of being the unofficial coordinator of local transportation planning.

On Wednesday night, he worked on strengthening his relationship with Pena. Riordan’s close friend, Nancy Daly, had the mayor and Pena over for dinner. “Just the three of us,” Riordan said.

Even his most severe critic on the City Council, Mark Ridley-Thomas, was supportive. “I think the mayor is finding out what government is really about, what it really has to do,” he said. Ridley-Thomas said, “I think he is really trying” to be a mayor who represents all parts of the city.

The next few months will be tough. The disastrous consequences of the earthquake will no doubt shape the rest of his term. But Riordan emerged from the first week of his test with a stronger grip on City Hall--and on the city--than before.