Charter Commissioners

The Times editorializes (“The Balloting Was Just the Beginning,” April 13) that Valley community leaders are a bunch of sore losers who should ignore the fact that the majority of the new charter commissioners were put in office by the city’s most powerful labor unions.

What The Times forgets is that these unions have now acquired the potential of absolute control over a city with a current budget of $4 billion and a population of 3.6 million, many of whom work in trades controlled by the unions. Does The Times really think the union-backed commissioners will create an unbiased charter that will not favor the unions, even if it is to the detriment of the rest of the city?

Forgetting administrative changes, local land-use decisions, school district breakups and other issues for the moment, almost every candidate who ran for the office of charter commissioner preached the same goal of neighborhood empowerment as a primary city change. This goal was to be accomplished by creating neighborhood councils that would determine local priorities for city services and would see to it that the services were obtained.

The most essential component of this approach was that a portion of our local taxes would remain in our local neighborhoods, to be spent by the neighborhood councils on services needed. The city would bid for the work, in direct competition with private contractors.

Putting daydreams aside, there is absolutely no way the union-crafted charter will allow Los Angeles to privatize any of its departments or contract out any meaningful amount of city services. This is unfortunate because it is also a guarantee that we will never get city labor costs under control.

I do not consider myself to be one of The Times’ sore losers. Like many other community activists, I am terribly disappointed by the union manipulation of the election but will continue to work to make our city better. I will provide input to both charter commissions, and I will continue to hope that secession does not become a necessary next step for dozens of unhappy communities all over Los Angeles.

WALTER N. PRINCE

Chairman, Planning and

Land-Use Committee, PRIDE

Chatsworth