Secret’s Out on Charter Reform Commissioners’ Swearing-In

Efforts to reform the city’s 72-year-old governing charter appeared to be the top priority for most Los Angeles city officials only a few months ago.

For good reason. The charter dictates how the city government will be run and delegates decision-making authority to elected officials.

It was such an important issue that Mayor Richard Riordan helped raise nearly $2 million to put a measure on the April ballot to create a 15-member elected reform panel. He used some of the money in an effort to get his handpicked candidates elected to that panel.

City Council members were so concerned that the elected panel would create a charter that increases the mayor’s authority at the council’s expense that they created a competing 21-member appointed panel to study charter reform.

So if charter reform is so important, why is it practically a state secret that the elected charter reform panel members will be sworn into office on June 30 in a huge City Hall ceremony alongside all the other elected city officials?

Either by design or by accident, the official invitation to the inauguration ceremony mentions the swearing-in of only Riordan, City Atty. James K. Hahn, City Controller Rick Tuttle, seven reelected City Council members and Councilwoman-elect Cindy Miscikowski.

But the invitation makes no mention of the 15 new charter commissioners, most of whom spent thousands of dollars to win election to the two-year volunteer post.

When asked about the omission, Pat Healy, the chief legislative assistant to the city clerk, said simply: “I can’t speak to that.”

City Clerk J. Michael Carey will administer the oath to all the elected officials.

But Healy did say that Riordan has instructed the city clerk’s office to organize the first meeting of the elected panel to be held somewhere in City Hall.

Healy said the first meeting will probably be held in the second week of July. The public can expect to be notified this time.

Making Tracks

Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) has thrown himself headlong into an arena that is not for the faint of heart: trying to save the Valley’s bacon at the MTA.

To do that, Hertzberg is trying to work out a mutual-aid pact with other areas that are disgruntled because the MTA is broke and that means no progress on their transit needs, namely Pasadena and South-Central Los Angeles.

Hertzberg said he’s been negotiating with state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) and other legislators to join forces on a state “bridge loan” that will provide upfront funding to prevent the MTA from withdrawing prior commitments.

The vehicle would be a budget trailer bill.

But outspoken MTA critic state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) ridiculed Hertzberg’s plan Friday as “posturing for the Valley” while throwing away state money on an insolvent agency.

“You do not give lines of credit to insolvent . . . government agencies,” Hayden said.

Besides, Hayden said, the bailout money would go straight into the hands of contractors for “planning” and the Valley would be no closer to getting a better transit system than it is now.

While not certain if he can put together the bailout, Hertzberg said he had to try.

“I couldn’t sit on the sidelines and watch the train go by,” he said.

What train?

Bunker Mentality

With the words “petition denied,” the state Supreme Court this week gave former Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi the victory he has sought for more than 20 years.

Bernardi, a tireless critic of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, has worked since 1975 to keep the CRA from lifting a $750-million spending cap on the agency’s Central Business District in downtown Los Angeles.

This week, the Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court ruling that kept intact the spending cap that was created as the result of a consent decree between the CRA and Bernardi in 1975.

“I was just elated when I got the message,” said Bernardi, who represented the northeast San Fernando Valley on the council for 32 years before retiring four years ago.

But Bernardi is not resting on his laurels. He said he is now going to fight another CRA project. “Now, I’m going after Bunker Hill,” he said.

Bernardi was referring to the Bunker Hill redevelopment project that was created in 1959 to revitalize a blighted downtown neighborhood. Although city officials promised to end the project in 1986, Bernardi said the Bunker Hill project continues to eat up taxpayer money today.

Bernardi claims that most CRA projects siphon millions of dollars in taxes away from schools and local government, long after the blight has been eliminated.

A former big band saxophone player, Bernardi said he is going to blow the whistle on the Bunker Hill project in letters to Gov. Pete Wilson and Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

Bernardi is now 85 years old, but if it takes 20 years to put an end to the Bunker Hill project, there is no doubt he is willing to put in the time.

Taxing Times

State Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) has been getting protest letters from the accept-any-and-all-tax-cut-plan folks, that is to say fellow Republicans.

She has raised their ire by refusing to back colleague Assemblyman Tom McClintock’s (R-Northridge) tax-cut plan, which he introduced recently to the Joint Budget Conference Committee on which she sits.

Wright said last week that she favors a tax cut, just not McClintock’s plan, which stood no chance of success.

She said she is unfazed by the negative reaction and says that the recent windfall of state money that McClintock is using as a basis for his tax-cut plan falls under the provisions of Proposition 98 and is earmarked for education.

As for McClintock, whom she has had strained relations with in the past, Wright asks rhetorically, “I am for a tax cut. Does it have to be your tax cut?”

Wright said McClintock should have introduced his tax cut in January when bills were supposed to be filed.

He says no one knew about the extra money in the bank until May.

*

QUOTABLE: “This very ‘simple’ bill as presented was really a Trojan horse for the breakup of the city of Los Angeles.” --State Sen. Richard Polanco, on current secession legislation