RLA Staff Cut by Nearly Half

RLA’s new chief executive, Linda Griego, has cut the riot-recovery agency’s paid staff nearly in half to 15 people in order to keep RLA afloat until 1997, when it is scheduled to go out of business.

Griego, who was named less than three weeks ago to head the day-to-day management of the nonprofit agency, said the restructuring will help her and new RLA Board Chairman Lodwrick Cook run a more streamlined operation, concentrating on aiding small and medium-sized businesses in impoverished neighborhoods to expand and create new jobs.

To assist the effort, Griego said she hopes to open satellite offices in southern Los Angeles, Pacoima and in southeast Los Angeles County.

Among the employees terminated this week were chief financial officer Ed Smith and business development project manager Joel K. Rubenstein, the two remaining RLA staffers with direct links to initial RLA head Peter Ueberroth.

“I had no choice but to downsize--the survival of the organization depended on it,” said Griego, who added that she was also loosening the organization’s ties to a small business lending agency created last year.

With RLA’s decidedly mixed record of accomplishment, Griego said she could not base her budget on the possibility of receiving additional private contributions. “We have to show some momentum before we can count on that,” she said.

RLA, initially formed at former Mayor Tom Bradley’s behest as the city’s main response to the 1992 riots, will have a much reduced mission under one-time mayoral candidate Griego, who earns $150,000 a year in her new post.

She said the remaining seven-person economic development executive staff will take a “bottoms-up” approach to identifying businesses that need help expanding. The staff will also attempt to start business consortiums made up of small firms that manufacture medical equipment, auto parts, textiles and electronics.