Riordan Takes Aggressive Stands on Airport, Tax Cut Issues

An invigorated Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan came out swinging Wednesday morning, signaling he was willing to take on not only the City Council and the airline lobby but even a couple of key initiatives of a fellow Republican--Gov. Pete Wilson.

Speaking at a Westside breakfast meeting of 500 civic leaders, Riordan promised a vigorous “counterattack” against the airline industry’s punishing campaign to keep his administration from taking some Los Angeles International Airport revenue for the city’s depleted treasury.

In response to questions from the audience, Riordan took issue with the 15% income tax cut Wilson proposed in January.

“Local government does need the money,” Riordan said. “If there is any way to send [the amount the tax cut would produce] to the cities and counties, then I’m against it.”

Riordan also criticized Wilson’s proposals to pour millions more into the state’s sagging public school system.

Wait until two key changes are made in how schools are run, the mayor urged. Hold schools accountable for getting results--even if that means firing principals or teachers--and give schools the authority and flexibility to meet their goals, Riordan said.

The mayor has been widely criticized for refusing to take stands on a number of issues important to city residents and, to a lesser degree, for a seeming lack of passion or conviction in speaking about programs central to his administration’s goals.

But on Wednesday he made no bones about his views, especially when it came to his foes on the City Council and their prevailing vote the day before--in the face of a painfully tight budget--to slow the pace of the ambitious police expansion program that the council had agreed to embark on in 1993, at the mayor’s urging.

“Some council members wish to ignore this promise of a safer city” and slow the pace of the costly expansion “even though it would cost us $20 million in federal grants,” Riordan said.

Yet, in an apparent nod to advice that he remember his friends, the mayor also made a point in his speech of thanking each of the seven council members who had voted the day before against scaling back the police expansion plan: Mike Hernandez, Joel Wachs, Richard Alarcon, Nate Holden, Marvin Braude, Hal Bernson and Rudy Svornich. (Riordan vowed to veto the measure when it reaches his desk, and he continued his combative stance Wednesday with a similar reaction to the morning’s council vote to ask voters to tax themselves to pay for more police.)

He also chastised the council and city staff for stalling City Hall seismic renovations by wanting to add to the project--a phenomenon he dismissed as “scope creep.” And he told the attendees at one of the “civic breakfasts” periodically held by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky that “every time I push on for something, the City Council rears its head, and I have to back off.”

Some in the audience thought they detected a preview of next year’s reelection campaign stump speeches in the mayor’s phrases.

“His answers were very direct,” Rick Taylor, who has run several city political campaigns over the years, said. “And he certainly threw down the gauntlet to the council.”

Nobody, however, asked Riordan about two issues that he has repeatedly refused to take a stand on--the anti-affirmative action measure on the November state ballot and a bill that would give San Fernando Valley voters the sole voice in a decision about whether they should be allowed to secede from the city.

Riordan has strongly opposed secession--and even promised to campaign against it--but has fumbled in his efforts to stay neutral on the issue of who gets to vote on it.

In a short post-breakfast interview, Yaroslavsky lauded the mayor for his determination to fight for a share of airport revenues to pay for police and other city services.

“The airport is a city asset, and it makes a huge profit. Riordan is right when he says city residents deserve some return on their investment,” Yaroslavsky said.