The Death of a Marriage Made in Politics

It was, said Mayor Richard Riordan, the most important press conference he’s had since taking office.

The mayor once again was in the grips of his addiction to hyperbole. The event, on City Hall steps Monday morning, was certainly important. Riordan and film business execs gave speeches hyping Hollywood’s contribution to the local economy.

Noteworthy, but looking back on Riordan’s year as mayor, the event didn’t rank with the fires or the earthquake. Or the tense discussion taking place behind closed doors inside City Hall at that very moment about how to successfully end two years of negotiations with the police union about a pay raise for the cops.

To be charitable, Riordan probably knew it, and just got carried away with putting on a big show for the movie moguls. For he looked deadly serious moments later as he climbed the City Hall steps to join the city negotiating team. He viewed the press mob around him as if it was an annoying distraction from the job ahead. “Negotiations will be confidential,” he said. “Any comment I will make will muddle it up.”

What Riordan didn’t say was that he had already made up his mind on how to handle the cops. After trying to charm and coddle the Police Protective League for months, the mayor had decided to tell the union to shove it.

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Riordan’s destination was the City Council’s conference room for a private meeting of the Executive Employee Relations Committee. The committee, composed of Riordan, key council members and City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie, is the city’s labor negotiating arm. Riordan sat quietly while his colleagues heard a status report and debated the next step.

After an hour or so, Deputy Mayor Robin Kramer stepped into the conference room, and handed Riordan the final draft of a statement about the police negotiations. Riordan and his staff had been working on it since last week.

Riordan, holding the statement, spoke. He said he was going to read something to the group and he wanted it adopted.

Some of the police union leadership, he read, “have resorted to name-calling and intimidation tactics, rather than sticking to the tough job of finding a solution. My fellow Angelenos, this is not the time for such tactics.”

He asked for the declaration of an impasse, a legal step that would give the city authority to impose a settlement. The negotiators agreed, and recommended that the council go along. It did in a closed session Tuesday afternoon.

It was an amazing event for all of us who had watched the Riordan romance with the Police Protective League flower into a passionate pre-election love affair. Even in L.A., where changing partners is a town sport, it’s a bit of a shock to see a relationship end.

Nobody thought it would end that way at the beginning. The Police Protective League leadership is composed almost entirely of white guys with great macho pretensions. Riordan is an ex-jock, and he was running on a pro-police platform. Our kind of guy, the cops assumed.

When the league endorsed Riordan, it gave his candidacy instant credibility among voters whose main concern was crime and safety. The league endorsement, along with the money Riordan poured into his campaign and voter disgust with entrenched politicians, made him a big winner. One of the new mayor’s first moves was to appoint the league’s combative president, Bill Violante, as a deputy mayor.

Trouble began when the new Riordan Administration confronted the police pay issue, which had been locked in negotiations for months. The cops wanted a raise. They deserved one. But the Bradley Administration and the council, pleading municipal poverty, had refused to grant them even a modest increase. Moreover, there weren’t enough cops, and the state of their equipment was disgraceful.

This year, Riordan and the council offered a 6% increase, plus a bonus to patrol officers. Riordan also put money aside for his main campaign pledge--putting more cops on the street by hiring new officers and having cops work overtime. That didn’t satisfy the league, which asked for a 9% hike. The union had decided that a bigger pay increase was more important than more cops.

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The mayor wanted to talk more. Not the police, however. They began acting as if they were a combination of a police intelligence squad and a SWAT team.

Even Riordan’s ex-cop deputy mayor, Violante, wasn’t spared. “The traitor who sold out the union,” is how one league board member referred to him at Tuesday’s council meeting. Previously, the league threatened to dig up dirt on council members’ private lives and picket their homes. It has staged “blue flus,” skirting the edge of laws forbidding cops to strike. No wonder Riordan is fed up with his old allies.

The league figures it can bully Riordan into submission. That’s a mistake. The mayor is a tough and dangerous enemy.