Charter Reform Panel to Begin Studying Plans

Imagine that Reseda, Tarzana and every other community in the city has its own elected council to decide local planning and budgetary issues.

And imagine that each community council sends a delegate to a citywide Metropolitan Council that rules on overarching issues for Los Angeles such as the operation of the airports and harbor.

That is one scenario that will be considered when a citizens panel holds its first meeting today as it begins a laborious attempt to change how Los Angeles operates by revising the city charter.

The community council idea was offered by the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. as a way to increase community participation in City Hall decisions and quell threats of a San Fernando Valley secession.

“It would allow people to literally walk to a council meeting where something gets done,” said Bob Scott, who heads VICA’s local issues committee.

Studying the idea will be the 21-member Charter Reform Commission that was appointed by the City Council and other elected officials to respond to complaints, primarily from the Valley, that City Hall is detached and unresponsive to the needs of Los Angeles’ 3.5 million residents.

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The commission’s primary goal is to study the 71-year-old charter that acts as the city’s constitution and recommend changes to the council, which could then put the recommendations on the ballot for the voters.

The first meeting, which will be held at City Hall, will focus mostly on electing officers and establishing meeting dates and budgets.

The VICA plan, in which the current City Council would be replaced by community panels, has already raised many questions for officials. For example, what will the boundaries be for each community? How many members will be in each council? Will the council members have a staff? How much will this larger bureaucracy cost?

“As with all things, the devil is in the details,” said Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who authored the ordinance to create the 21-member reform panel.

Scott said VICA’s proposal is only a general outline for a new government. Details of the government’s day-to-day operation, he said, can be worked out by the commission in the future.

But he said one possibility is that 35 community councils can be elected--one for each of the 35 planning districts that the city uses for zoning and development matters.

Scott said the members of the community councils may be unpaid volunteers or part-time employees, while the president of the council would be a full-time representative.

But even under that scenario, the size of the current council would increase from 15 to 35 members, each of which would require offices and a staff.

Galanter gave the idea a lukewarm response, saying, “I’m surprised to hear VICA propose more than doubling the number of elected officials.”

Scott said the idea “is not to increase the bureaucracy but to provide more entry points for the general public to be involved in local government.”

He also argued that city government is already rife with duplication and inefficiency. Scott added that the additional elected officials will be offset by cuts that the reform movement will make in the overall city bureaucracy.

Councilman Mike Feuer, another strong advocate for charter reform, said he supports any plan to increase community participation in city government.

But he said it is important that the decentralization plan does not impede the city from having a “united vision of the city as a whole.”

As the commission begins its study, another effort is underway to create an elected charter reform panel that would put reform measures directly on the ballot for voter approval.

A committee headed by Mayor Richard Riordan and Studio City attorney David Fleming submitted 303,000 signatures last month to put a measure on the ballot, asking voters to create a 15-member reform panel.

Election officials are currently checking the signatures to ensure that the proposal qualifies for the ballot.

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The council has rejected Riordan’s plan because it leaves the council out of the reform process. But Riordan has argued that true reform can only spring from a citizens panel that is independent of elected officials.

Meanwhile, the mayor and several allies have filed a lawsuit against the council, asking a federal district judge to clear up several legal issues regarding how and when the reform panel would be elected.

On Wednesday, the council filed a response to the lawsuit, asking the judge to reject the request because the petition drive has yet to qualify for the ballot. It also suggests that the legal issues should be addressed by the state Legislature and not by a federal judge.