More Than Just a City Hall Power Struggle

Out in the neighborhoods, the historic struggle over rewriting the Los Angeles City Charter takes on a human dimension.

In these places, far from City Hall, Angelenos who seldom, if ever, make the news discuss matters important to their daily lives.

That’s the way it was last Tuesday night in the multipurpose room of Carpenter Avenue Elementary School, where a standing-room crowd attended the regular meeting of the Studio City Residents Assn.

With President Tony Lucente presiding, the association members discussed matters ranging from house burglaries to a proposed huge expansion of MCA’s Universal Studios. But they knew that in the end, the decisions would be made inside the downtown beltway--in City Hall, where MCA’s lobbyists wield great influence, and at police headquarters, where bureaucrats make the final calls on the number of cops available for burglary calls.

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Why can’t some of these decisions be made in neighborhoods such as Studio City, by the men and women most affected by them?

This is a question that is at the heart of the drive to write a new City Charter.

It is what prompted association President Lucente to run for a seat on the Charter Reform Commission that would be created by Proposition 8 on the April 8 city ballot. Mayor Richard Riordan is backing the proposition and has raised about $500,000 for the campaign.

The campaign has been portrayed in the media and in political debate as just another City Hall power struggle, this one between the mayor, who wants to increase his office’s clout, and the council, which doesn’t want to yield an inch. That’s probably one reason the public isn’t interested.

Tony Lucente’s story puts a different slant on it.

Like so many Southlanders, Lucente, consumer affairs manager for Nissan USA, is from somewhere else. Born in Dayton, Ohio, he graduated from college in the Midwest and arrived in Los Angeles in 1986 after working in the computer industry in Australia.

He moved into the eastern end of Studio City and immediately found himself embroiled in a typical L.A. neighborhood fight. A developer bulldozed five houses to make way for a big apartment complex, and did it on Thanksgiving Day, when unsuspecting residents couldn’t protest. Lucente and the other neighbors joined the Studio City Residents Assn., and he soon became an unofficial expert in development and land use.

The Studio City association is one of Los Angeles’ largest and most influential homeowners groups.

But because of the way City Council districts are divided and cut up to favor incumbents, the association and Studio City itself lack the clout to match the business and labor lobbyists who dominate the City Council.

Years ago, City Hall politicians divided politically active Studio City among three council districts. They are the 4th, represented by John Ferraro, Joel Wachs’ 2nd, and Michael Feuer’s 5th.

As a result, Studio City residents opposed to a disruptive project such as a huge mall might have to trek to three council offices in search of support. This takes time not usually available to working people, leaving a clear field to the lobbyist employed by the mall developer.

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Lucente and other self-styled neighborhood residents are running for the Charter Reform Commission on the promise that they will give neighborhoods real political power.

Sherman Oaks’ Jeff Brain, for example, wants neighborhoods to elect councils with power to make planning decisions. If you don’t like the garish mall planned down the street, you could protest to your neighborhood council, which would not only meet at a convenient time and place for residents like you, but would have real power to halt the project.

Such neighborhood councils are not far-fetched. One of Mayor Riordan’s most influential San Fernando Valley allies, attorney David Fleming, favors them. So does the mayor’s opponent in the April election, state Sen. Tom Hayden.

They all agree that City Hall has lost the human touch and that L.A. is too big, too complex, to be governed from downtown.