Mayor Nominates Black for Seat on Fire Commission

In the midst of mounting allegations of discrimination and sexism in the Los Angeles City Fire Department, Mayor Richard Riordan has nominated an African American businessman to a vacant seat on the Fire Commission.

The mayor’s office said Wednesday that his choice of Kenneth T. Lombard, who now sits on the Metropolitan Water District board, was based on Lombard’s qualifications for the post and was not made in response to calls for a black on the commission that oversees the Fire Department.

Lombard said the mayor had first approached him about filling an upcoming vacancy on the Fire Commission several weeks ago, before the release of a city audit last month detailing the difficulties faced by minorities and women in the department. Most of the top department posts are held by white men.

The Fire Commission has had no black representative since Riordan took over from Tom Bradley in July, 1993, and called for resignations of all commissioners.

The Fire Department, which has denied any wrongdoing, has come under increasing criticism and scrutiny, which was heightened by the release this week of a videotape showing the struggles of women recruits. A divided Fire Commission voted Nov. 23 for an independent review of department hiring and promotion practices, and several City Council members have castigated department leaders.

Lombard, 40, a business partner in basketball great Magic Johnson’s bid to bring a movie theater complex to the Crenshaw area, said he wants to reserve judgment on the Fire Department until he can review the facts.

A venture capitalist who helped build shopping centers in Watts and other urban areas, Lombard said he met Riordan in a business capacity and later supported Riordan’s campaign for mayor.

Lombard said he believes that “having diversity on all the commissions has been a priority” for Riordan and that the issue has come up “in every conversation I’ve had with the mayor.”

The choice was hailed by an official of the Stentorians, an organization of black firefighters that has pushed for African American representation on the commission in the wake of the audit.

“This is an urgent first step the mayor needed to take,” said Melanie Lomax, legal counsel for the Stentorians. “When a Fire Department is dominated by white males, it is critical that you have a Fire Commission that represents the community.”

Given the mayor’s statement last week that ethnicity would not be a factor in the appointment, Lomax said she was “really surprised, but favorably surprised, that Mayor Riordan is taking this step. . . . He indicated he would appoint based on qualifications, and I’m glad he found someone who is African American and meets his standards.”

Lomax said she does not know Lombard but added that he has a reputation as “reasonable and a moderate.”

If the appointment is confirmed by the City Council, Lombard will replace Michelle Park-Steel, who resigned to accept an appointment to the Airport Commission.

In a related development Wednesday, three former female firefighters at a news conference blasted Fire Chief Donald O. Manning for characterizing the video as a harmless compilation of bloopers.

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Manning had said their protective garb made it impossible to tell the gender of the recruits in the video. But one of the women, a member of the Fire Academy class featured in the footage, said that she can identify all the recruits who made the mistakes and that all of them are women.

“(The video) documents an assault on a woman’s right to work in the Los Angeles Fire Department,” said Kay Harter, 22, who quit the academy two weeks before graduation. She said the training exercises “were intended to discourage us from our dreams of becoming firefighters.”

Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez contributed to this story.