NEWS ANALYSIS : Riordan’s Budget Ideas a Tough Sell : Finances: Mayor’s proposal to consolidate six departments in $4.3-billion spending plan faces a major fight in the City Council.

Even after weeks of exhaustive effort to build consensus with the City Council, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s first budget will face serious skirmishes in its attempts to crunch a city bureaucracy that has remained largely impervious to change.

Ironically, as he seeks council approval of his $4.3-billion spending plan, Riordan is likely to face his biggest headaches over a series of departmental reconfigurations that save the least money.

Already, critics have warned that merging half a dozen agencies into a new Community Services Department cannot help but reduce each group’s authority and effectiveness.

“To be folded into a department . . . with another layer of bureaucracy is going to dilute our power,” argued Paula Petrotta, director of the city’s Commission on the Status of Women. Riordan wants to merge the agency with the Human Relations Commission, the Department of Aging, the Department of Social Service, the city’s Child Care Coordinator and portions of the Community Development Department.

Jan Breidenbach, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit Housing, said its 450 members are concerned about the consequences of a second consolidation, one that would place the Community Redevelopment Agency and Housing Department in a new Citywide Development Agency.

“They had it that way before and neither side got enough attention,” Breidenbach said, “and what they found was that single-focus agencies gave more attention to the issue.”

She and others noted that former Mayor Tom Bradley created the housing department in 1990 amid concerns that the need for new affordable housing was being lost in the bureaucracy.

Now, Breidenbach said, that concern looms again.

“We have just created a housing department and it is functioning fairly well in the second largest city in the country with the largest affordable housing crisis in the country,” she said. “Why do we want to change it?”

Likewise, while the Board of Public Works has been attacked often over the years as an arcane and scandal-prone overseer of contracts, its proposed elimination will save no more than $1.1 million a year. More importantly, critics say, its disbanding could cost the city far more by leaving street and environmental services in the hands of civil servants instead of political appointees. Those services and projects include the multibillion-dollar overhaul of the city’s sewage treatment system and cleanup of Santa Monica Bay.

“Without a strong and representative Board of Public Works, the city may be destined to repeat the mistakes of the past,” the environmental group Heal the Bay wrote city officials in urging that the board not be scrapped.

Added John Stodder, an environmental consultant who served six years in the Bradley Administration: “In the Bradley years, (the Board of Public Works) allowed us to challenge some political realities and address problems, maybe not on a dime, but certainly faster than if we had gone through any other city department.”

Meantime, another major component of Riordan’s budget--multimillion-dollar transfers from the city’s three independent departments--seems likely to draw its biggest opposition from the shippers and airlines that use the harbor and airports.

While the Department of Water and Power is being asked for $75 million and the Harbor Department $20 million, officials there say they can live with those numbers. The same is true at the Department of Airports, which faces a $13-million transfer that is almost double last year’s amount. When asked if the transfer would be a problem for the department, Airport Commission President Ted Stein said simply, “Absolutely not.”

Nonetheless, the move could spark a new battle with the airlines, which figure they will be asked to make up that amount with higher fees.

And if that happens, the Air Transport Assn. says, it will have no choice but to pass its costs on to the traveling public.

“It is a $13-million tax on those using the airports. That is all it is,” says John Ek, the ATA’s director of state government affairs.

And while he does not use the word lawsuit, Ek says of the transfer: “We will pursue all avenues available to us to oppose it.”

At the Harbor Department, there was resignation, if not outright relief, among some city officials that the mayor was not asking for more than the $20 million he did.

“I’m very happy that none of our capital improvements or services for tenants will be affected,” said Harbor Commission President Frank Sanchez.

But again, his position was not shared by the association representing port tenants.

“If they have $20 million to give away, they ought to give it back to their customers,” said Jay Winter, executive secretary of the Steamship Assn. of Southern California.

Of course, that transfer and Riordan’s overall budget plan could change overnight if state lawmakers, groping for ways to overcome California’s $3 billion deficit, decide again to ask the city for money to balance California’s budget. In the last two years, the city has lost $117 million in property taxes to the state.

Currently, said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City), there are no indications that the city will be asked to provide the state more than it has in recent years.

“We are trying . . . to make sure the city doesn’t get impacted this year beyond what was done in last year’s budget,” Katz said. “We are going to try and hold the line.”

Then again, no one can provide that assurance. Certainly not this early in the budget year. And no one knows that better than Riordan’s chief of staff, William McCarley, who has spent more than 30 years at City Hall, most recently as the Los Angeles chief legislative analyst.

“The initial pronouncement (from state officials) is that they don’t intend to go after us,” McCarley said. “But certainly we are concerned . . . that the state might look at us for more assistance, but more important, we are concerned about the economy of the state.”

That is why, McCarley said, Riordan’s initial budget reflects a short-term move toward his long-term vision for the city.

“We are proposing,” he said, “what we think are some good first steps toward change.”