A Promising Budget of Measured Steps : In letting go of most divisive ideas, Mayor Riordan grows as a political leader

In his proposed 1994-95 budget, Mayor Richard Riordan has come up with a basic “livability” quotient for Los Angeles: more police, better-paved streets, less graffiti, parks and libraries that remain open and functional. These are good goals. Riordan would achieve them through a series of governmental shake-ups, some welcome, some not so well thought out. But the best thing about the budget is what’s not in it: a Los Angeles International Airport sale or lease scheme, which undoubtedly would have proved futile, or a contracting out of city sanitation jobs, which surely would have been the most socially divisive issue to hit City Hall in a long time.

Riordan wisely has taken a more measured step in privatization, recommending an experiment on the Westside in which firms would bid on issuing parking tickets, thus freeing city parking enforcement officers to perform other traffic duties. He proposes to raise more than $100 million by selling some assets of the Department of Water and Power, and by shifting expenses from the city general fund to some accounts of the well-funded Harbor and Airport departments.

The biggest fight the budget will face in the City Council will be over sacred cows. Riordan recommends merging several city departments and eliminating one. Some of this makes sense: As important as is the work of agencies on aging, human relations and the status of women, is there no way for the city and the county to share information and staffs--and costs--in these areas? Turf protection alone is no rationale for maintaining separate city and county departments for everything.

Some city departments have unique functions--the Community Redevelopment Agency and the Board of Public Works come to mind--so major change might adversely affect the work they do. The proposed elimination of the full-time Public Works Board would save the city $1.1 million, but how much would be lost in terms of the board’s dogged attention to illegal dumping and to ensuring that multimillion-dollar city contracts are fairly awarded?

Richard Riordan was elected on the promise that he would find a way to “turn L.A. around.” That pledge meant different things to different people. It was reassuring to those who saw Los Angeles as a more dangerous and less friendly place than it used to be; it was disturbing to those who perceived a determination to turn back the clock on social and political gains for the growing minority populations. While Riordan’s budget proposal shows his strong business leanings, it also demonstrates he’s no ideologue hellbent on pushing pet proposals no matter what cost and what alienation might result. With this budget, the venture capitalist-lawyer is turning into a real politician. And for the mayor of 3.5 million people, that’s no insult.