Efficiency Experts Find Plenty of ‘Areas of Opportunity’ : City finances: Study released by mayor says police and fire services are particularly ripe for change to more productive practices. But many of the ideas face high political hurdles.

The daily police roll call, that traditional start-of-the-shift gathering immortalized on “Hill Street Blues” a few years ago, got labeled as a time-waster by a private consulting firm hired for an efficiency study of Los Angeles’ vast bureaucracy.

The study, released by the mayor’s office Wednesday, also frowned on the Fire Department’s expensive practice of using firefighters to handle emergency calls and questioned the need for having as many as four firefighters on each engine. And it found the city’s parking enforcement operations to be “terribly underproductive.”

Commissioned last fall to help the city with an anticipated $200-million budget gap, the report by Cupertino-based David M. Griffith & Associates examined various city operations to suggest ways of cutting costs without harming services. The idea was championed by Mayor Richard Riordan, who campaigned on a promise to make city government more efficient, and embraced by council members and budget officials eager for alternatives to service cuts and layoffs.

Michael C. Mount, a Griffith vice president, said the firm initially identified $224 million in possible savings just by reviewing city operations in 20 services and comparing them with those in 13 other cities deemed comparable to Los Angeles. Fast-growing and mostly in the West, the cities included San Antonio, Long Beach, Phoenix, Fresno, El Paso and Houston.

The study concentrated heavily on police and fire--important, highly visible departments whose size provides greater “areas of opportunity” for identifying savings. But “only a fraction” of the Griffith recommendations will be reflected in the mayor’s 1995-96 budget proposal, due next week, said Deputy Mayor Mike Keeley.

That is because most of the ideas are politically unpalatable, should be subjected to philosophical debate among city elected officials, or are too complicated to put into effect in time for the fiscal year that starts July 1, he said.

The City Council has rebuffed all the mayor’s efforts to turn some city operations over to private contractors, including parking enforcement.

But Keeley and Chief Administrative Officer Keith Comrie, the city’s top financial officer, said they see the report’s recommendations as valuable tools for evaluating operations and finding long-term savings. For several years, the city has balanced its budget with a series of one-time fixes, such as selling surplus properties or postponing building maintenance, and it probably will need to do so this year, Keeley said.

He said the mayor will ask city commissioners, whom he appoints with council approval, to review the recommendations along with department heads.

Significantly, the report also helps the mayor fulfill his aim to hold department managers accountable for their performances.

“It’s difficult to hold managers accountable if you don’t know what the standards are,” Keeley said. “Now we can pretty much know whether people are on track or not.”

On Tuesday, voters gave the mayor much greater authority to fire officials he and the council decide are not performing well.

Noting that the report found that Los Angeles runs a tighter ship than comparable cities in some areas, including street sweeping and the number of top officials in the police and fire departments, Keeley said the study also indicates what areas should probably be left alone.

Many of the recommendations will also need the agreement not only of department heads but also of employees unions. Some, such as the report’s findings on how police detectives are deployed, already are engendering debate.

As for the roll call, the consulting firm called for city policy-makers “to rethink the entire idea” of a daily gathering to exchange information. It takes 45 minutes of an officer’s time each day. With better communications technology, daily meetings may not be necessary, the report noted.