Keep Civic Reform Alive : Tuesday’s voters send an unmistakable signal

Make no mistake about it, that was a significant election Tuesday. The turnout (16.2%) wasn’t great, to say the least, but by and large the results were. To simplify the outcome: Los Angeles has voted for reform; indeed, given any reasonable opportunity, it continues to back all reasonable reforms. Now the politicians and city administrators must not let the voters down.

In charter amendment after charter amendment--eight, all told--voters chose to move ahead to forge a more modern government:

-- Yes (80% of the vote) to simplifying the city’s arcane and Byzantine purchasing system.

-- Yes (62%) to allowing the mayor, with appropriate restrictions, to remove top administrators who aren’t performing up to standards; right now they have all the protections of a tenured professor, if not more.

-- Yes (65%) to allowing the Police Commission to appoint an inspector general to help monitor Police Department reforms.

-- Yes (by up to 78%) to five other good-government measures.

This clarion call for municipal reform did not arise in a vacuum. The reform movement goes back to 1989, when the city Ethics Commission, chaired by attorney/teacher Geoffrey Cowan (now director of the Voice of America), issued a monumental report calling for the creation of a permanent ethics panel and the passage of a new city ethics code. Another key year is 1991, when the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, headed by Warren Christopher (now U.S. secretary of state), issued its historic report calling for thorough reform of the LAPD. And the effort traces back also to the formation of LEARN, led by former state legislator Mike Roos, which aims at nothing less than saving the city’s imperiled public school system through education restructuring.

All of these efforts are vital on their own, but taken together they represent the resurgent energy of a Los Angeles that isn’t willing to lie down and die. It reflects a city that retains a resilient inner will and a sense of fraternal civic commitment.

That’s why it’s so important that all the winners in Tuesday’s election dedicate themselves to this reform movement. And it’s crucial that the four runoff candidates in the two important City Council showdowns in June do the same: Incumbent Nate Holden against challenger Stan Sanders in the 10th District and in the hard-fought 5th District race the impressive Mike Feuer, who gathered an amazing 40% of the vote against the far better-known Barbara Yaroslavsky. Each of these candidates should promise that if elected they will help keep reform alive. For right now it is civic reform more than anything else that is fueling the spirit of Los Angeles.