Changing the Way L.A. Is Governed : Charter reform: We need to rethink the questions of power, accountability and the city’s responsiveness to its citizens.

There is a lot of talk now about reinventing Los Angeles. While much can be done to change the way we do business, the big questions--distribution of power, accountability and government responsiveness to its citizens--would require a major revision of the city’s charter.

The issues of who, how and when to rewrite the city’s constitution are still in the debating stage. The current charter was written in the 1920s, and though it has been amended hundreds of times, there has not been a successful major reform; the last attempt was in 1970. All of the reform proposals have called for more power for the mayor and less for the council, but that is only one reason for resistance. The last failure was generally attributed to opposition by the city’s employee unions, and to the absence of a sense of crisis. If there is one thing charter reform has going for it now, it is a sense of crisis. We own the image.

While Mayor Richard Riordan has looked favorably on revising the charter, the earthquake gave him a taste of what it is like to actually be able to say “do this” to someone and have it happen. The emergency powers--and the shared goals of everyone in the city--made it work for him and for us. In the long run, it won’t be like that, and Riordan knows that as much as anyone.

We are a city of laws, and while we may be strangling on them, we know the regulations came into being because someone, at some time, responded to a need. But needs change. Since the earthquake, the mayor has been saying it is easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission. Sooner or later, it is going to be clear that permission is a necessary part of the process.

So, the question is how to go about changing the charter. We could continue to do it piecemeal (like the ethics and Police Department reforms); or we could mount a full-scale charter commission. The question of who would name a commission came up when Proposition 5 (which gave the City Council more authority over commissions) passed in the midst of the King/Gates controversy. There was a mini-movement among civic-minded citizens to create a charter commission and put it on the ballot by petition if the council declined to do so. But then the mayoral election came round and everyone decided to give the new mayor a chance to do it himself.

The second issue is how the commission would function. One view is to get a small group of experts together to write a draft charter, and then present it to the council, or to the people by petition. Another view is to create a commission, and neighborhood charter committees to which issues such as accountability and the distribution of power would be brought for consensus. The committees would be supported by people trained in getting consensus, and they would provide something sorely lacking in the city today--a mediating institution between our smaller communities and the government.

There are many permutations possible in the process of charter reform, including the examples in 1991 of the city’s ethics and Christopher (police reform) commissions, entities named by government that raised funds from the private sector, held hearings and passed their reports to the council, with the threat of going the petition route if the council failed to act.

To some, the end result is the only critical issue. To others, the process is almost as important because it would give us an opportunity to experiment with ways of creating a government that works. We need a way to recognize the inevitable tension between the need for a citywide voice and the need for control over one’s own life. We need to explore the real difference between a city that is homogeneous and expects little of government (the Los Angeles of the 1920s) and a city that is ethnically diverse, with competing notions of the role of government and real battles over the distribution of scarce resources.

How the charter is written will have an impact on its chances for passage. If it takes power from the Council, odds are the Council will oppose it. If it threatens the unions, so will they. If it is too complex and distant for the voters, they will certainly turn it down. On the other hand, if the process reaches out to those affected, educates the separate communities and builds a neighborhood constituency for charter reform, it might stand a reasonable chance of success.

We need to begin the process. It will take time to complete. It could be Mayor Riordan’s best chance for turning Los Angeles around.