Flunking the Lessons of City Hall 101

Only two hallways separate Mayor Richard Riordan’s suite from the Los Angeles City Council chamber, but it might as well be an ocean.

When the mayor ventures into council territory, it’s as though he’s a perennial tourist in a strange land. Even though hosts and visitor are outwardly friendly, the gap between them remains enormous. Despite three years on the job, Riordan still hasn’t found the combination of strength and subtlety needed to successfully negotiate with the turf-conscious lawmakers.

That helps explain why the city has moved so slowly in the two areas most vital to post-riot L.A.--police reform and economic development.

The gulf was evident after the mayor recently vetoed city financial participation in a First Interstate Bank housing and retail store project at 81st Street and Vermont Avenue, where Pepperdine University was located before it moved to Malibu. He said it would cost the city too much money and was opposed by some residents.

The African American and Latino neighborhood, once filled with thriving businesses, is now a dreary landscape of vacant lots, some the result of 1992 riot damage.

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The dispute involves a messy combination of personalities, politics and policy.

Sponsoring the development is City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, an influential African American political leader. Opposing it is one of his constituents, another powerful black leader, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). She lives nearby and supports her neighbors. They don’t like the idea of relatively low-cost housing being built near their pleasant single-family homes just west of Vermont Avenue. They’d rather have new stores instead.

The feud between Ridley and Waters began before the project was conceived. The two had a falling out in 1991 when Waters, supporting longtime aide Rod Wright, opposed Ridley-Thomas for the City Council. Neither the congresswoman nor the councilman are forgive-and-forget people and their rivalry has raged unabated through the years, impervious to time and neutral mediators.

Riordan is on Waters’ side. That is because Ridley-Thomas opposed Riordan in the 1993 election for mayor while Waters remained neutral.

Another important factor in the dispute is the council’s view of its prerogatives, and its philosophy of mutual back-scratching. Figuring that they didn’t want Ridley-Thomas to vote against one of their projects, the lawmakers voted for the First Interstate proposal 10-0.

With all these complications, you’d figure the project would be clearly marked “HANDLE WITH CARE” when it reached Riordan’s office. Instead, it was treated like junk mail.

David Cobb, Riordan’s director of policy, planning and local government affairs, was the first to take a look at it.

Cobb is a personable, smart man who seems to reflect the business-oriented, bottom-line philosophy of his boss. He’s in the council chambers during meetings, lobbying the mayor’s agenda. But council aides find him brusque and disrespectful of the council’s often arcane procedures, customs, rules and protocol.

Cobb did a bottom-line analysis, and saw that the city subsidy would amount to about $90,000 a dwelling unit. “I started asking questions,” he said.

He took the matter to his direct boss, Deputy Mayor Michael Keeley, another hardheaded bottom-liner who was one of the attorneys in Riordan’s law office before the election. Although Keeley has tried to correct the affliction, he still has a tin ear for the sounds of City Hall.

Keeley agreed with Cobb’s unfavorable financial analysis and fired off a letter blasting the project. “I can’t recall a time when the mayor’s office sent such a letter on an economic development project,” a council aide told me.

A week later, the 15-member council voted 10-0 to approve the project. Riordan subsequently vetoed it.

But chances are the veto will be overridden. Riordan needs six votes to block such an override. Council President John Ferraro, a Riordan ally, said it doesn’t look as though the mayor will get the votes “at this time.”

“I think he was a little late in the procedure,” Ferraro said. “You have to be in the process if you want to do something and he wasn’t in the process until too late.”

Last Tuesday afternoon, Ferraro and another mayoral ally, Councilman Hal Bernson, met with Riordan and Ridley-Thomas to try to work out a compromise, perhaps by adding more stores to the development.

If they do, Riordan would be spared an embarrassing defeat, and South-Central L.A. would get a much-needed and long-overdue housing and commercial development.

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But even with a settlement, the long-term problem would remain. As is true with the President of the United States and the governor of California, the mayor has to work with the legislative branch to get his program through. Every substantial Police Department reform, every major economic development, needs council approval.

And, once passed, the mayor needs council cooperation for his program to work. The City Charter gives the City Council extraordinary influence in day-to-day management--much more power than is allowed Congress or the Legislature.

Riordan could try to change that by persuading the voters to adopt a charter amendment increasing his power. But the next city election is almost two years away.

That’s too long to wait. For now, the mayor and his aides have to live by the current rules--and more important, learn how to play the game.