Riordan’s Revamp Plan Hits Trouble : Government: Some council members say consolidating departments could hurt programs on women’s issues, pollution cleanup and housing.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s proposal for a sweeping reorganization of the city’s bureaucracy ran afoul of two City Council committees Monday, with lawmakers saying that departmental consolidations could damage programs that promote low-income housing, women’s rights and cleanup of Santa Monica Bay.

Riordan’s plan to double funding for a church-based anti-gang program also appeared to be in some danger, as several council members said they will not increase support for the fledgling Hope in Youth organization while more proven programs are struggling.

The developments Monday represented the first substantial setbacks for Riordan’s $4.3-billion spending plan, which the full City Council must consider by the end of the month.

Riordan made “reinventing government” a centerpiece of his campaign and proposed last month the elimination of the full-time board that oversees public works programs, as well as the creation of new super-agencies for social programs and economic development.

But after all those plans came under fire Monday, Riordan insisted that he is willing to compromise and that the growing council opposition “is not a giant thing.”

The mayor’s aides predicted that Riordan can still win some of the votes when the budget comes before the full City Council later this month. But even if Riordan’s reorganizations do not succeed, his central plan for beefing up the Police Department will remain intact, Deputy Mayor Robin Kramer was quick to predict.

“These other issues around the periphery haven’t changed that,” she said.

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Trouble for the Riordan plan began immediately at Monday afternoon’s meeting of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee. A contingent of about 30 women came to City Hall to oppose the mayor’s proposal to consolidate the Commission on the Status of Women with five other social service agencies.

Representatives from several women’s rights organizations said the new Community Services Department would not assure the same level of attention to women’s issues. They complained that fewer women employees would come forward with complaints of sexual harassment if the commission were subservient to a larger agency.

One woman told the committee that she had been directed to a shelter and saved from a husband who nearly killed her by throwing her through a plate glass window. “I would have been just another statistic if it weren’t for the commission,” she said.

Riordan aides said that under the reorganization the commission would retain its separate identity and that $2.2 million would be saved by having payroll, accounting and other functions consolidated for the small departments. That money could go back into programs, they said.

But the council budget committee recommended 3 to 0 that the women’s commission be kept independent.

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Next before the committee were defenders of the full-time board that currently runs the city’s public-works programs. They said the Board of Public Works has helped improve the city’s sewer system, reducing the pollutants dumped from sewers into Santa Monica Bay.

Mark Gold, staff scientist for Heal the Bay, said the board in recent years has created an “environmental ethic” that helped push ahead the renovation of the city’s antiquated sewers.

Council members also questioned whether the anticipated $1.5 million saving from eliminating the board is worth the doubts about what would replace it. Riordan had argued that a single department head could be held more accountable and would be less susceptible to political pressure and lobbying.

But council members Ruth Galanter and Richard Alatorre recommended against the elimination of the board, while Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky supported it.

Just as those proposals were suffering initial defeats, Riordan was facing another group of council members with his plan to create a single Citywide Development Agency to bring together economic development programs now diffused in at least three agencies.

Facing him were the skeptical members of two City Council committees that focus on housing--Community Redevelopment and Economic Development.

The four city lawmakers noted that it was the City Council that had suggested focusing the city’s economic development efforts in a single super-agency. But they said Riordan’s rush to embrace the proposal and include it in the budget left too many questions unanswered--particularly how workers with divergent pay scales and retirement plans can be brought into a single department.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas and other committee members said they also are likely to oppose the plan to include the city’s Housing Department in the new Citywide Development Agency, saying it would be lost in the larger body.

“What (Riordan) set out to do was entirely too ambitious and not thought through sufficiently,” Ridley-Thomas said. “This economic development question is entirely too important to rush. We cannot afford to blow it.”

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Although the joint committees are not expected to vote until next week, the council members signaled Monday that they would like the consolidation considered separately from the budget and that they want a separate city Housing Department.

At the end of Riordan’s longest budget day, council members also sharply questioned his plan to double spending to $5 million for the Hope in Youth anti-gang program.

They asked why the program, initiated by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other religious leaders, has not been required to compete with dozens of other agencies for scarce funding. And they said they are concerned that the city has been asked to pay more while Los Angeles County’s proposed contribution remains the same.