Roos Donates His Papers to Researchers

Former Assemblyman Mike Roos donated his political papers to the Center for the Study of Los Angeles on Monday, dramatically swelling the archives at Loyola Marymount University’s year-old policy institute.

The papers--notes, appointment books and pending legislation files collected over Roos’ 14-year tenure with the Assembly--have been held for the last 5 1/2 years in a far less glamorous rental storage facility. With the help of archivists, they will be sorted, cataloged, inventoried on the Internet and stored in acid-free folders at the university’s Westside campus alongside last year’s donation from former state Sen. David Roberti, among others.

Though a newcomer to the archival front, the Loyola center hopes to build its own niche by gathering such papers from key Los Angeles policymakers to support its mission of documenting the city’s past and guiding its future. It is currently in negotiations to obtain Mayor Richard Riordan’s files, according to center Director Fernando Guerra.

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown suggested at a Monday morning reception that Roos’ papers offer a “bird’s-eye view” of a fast-paced era in state politics, a time when Brown was Assembly speaker and Roos his chief ally as speaker pro tem.

Among the pieces of legislation that will be traced through Roos’ files are the beginning and end to the renters’ tax credit, early efforts to respond to AIDS and detailed accounts of Roos’ successful efforts to restrict assault weapons.

Roos resigned from the Legislature in March 1991 to become president of what has become Los Angeles’ largest education reform movement, LEARN--Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now.

Monday’s ceremony was laden with choreographed symbolism. Roos turned over his Assembly gavel to the center, saying “order out of chaos is so much what the political process is about.” Then students from Foshay Learning Center, a public school near USC that was among the first involved in LEARN, delivered six boxes tied with holiday ribbon.

But those neat packages were mere symbols as well--in fact, they were empty. Instead, Guerra said, the center faces months of tedious work cleaning out a storage room “filled with boxes.”