Interdependence Day : Riordan Must Lead L.A. and, by Extension, the Southland, Into an Era of Cooperation

Richard Riordan, never a natural orator, made one of his longest and most successful speeches Monday at his second inaugural as mayor of Los Angeles. He spoke of the city as “jewel of the Pacific Rim, a leader in the global marketplace.”

He defined many challenges and spoke specifically of ways to meet them.

But neither Riordan nor Los Angeles nor any of the other 140-odd cities in Southern California will be able to meet upcoming challenges alone. They will need to reach out to each other, pooling the few resources they have.

And so it’s a good sign that Riordan is making an effort at speechmaking, because the “bully pulpit” of his office as chief executive of California’s largest city is one of the only power tools available to him or to the head of any other local government.

The bald truth is that local governments have virtually no financial discretion at this time in California. The state government in Sacramento takes almost all the locally collected property tax revenue. And voters last year passed Proposition 218, which prohibits new taxes or fees being levied without direct voter approval.

The upshot is that fostering economic development--encouraging new companies, supporting older ones--is the only way a locality can increase its revenues and thus provide the level of municipal services its residents have come to expect and demand.

And for Los Angeles to attract and encourage business, it will have to cooperate with neighboring communities.

“Riordan is going to have to become a regional leader,” says William Fulton, an urban planner and author of “The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles.”

The point of Fulton’s book is that Southern Californians in recent years have too often retreated into their own communities just as the issues facing them have become less local, more regional. On the big questions of air quality, transportation and the economy, Southern California is interconnected and interdependent--from the Moreno Valley to Ventura.

And Los Angeles, with 4 million people within its city limits, has the votes and the economic heft to attract national attention on matters that affect the region.

But cooperation and regional leadership has not been the pattern of Riordan’s first term.

To be sure, he had his hands full trying to hold together an economy threatened with destruction from the worst recession in the city’s history, one of its worst earthquakes and the aftermath of riots that helped bring the lawyer-businessman to office.

Riordan’s administration has brought Los Angeles back partly by taking combative positions--fighting Burbank and other communities to retain businesses.

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Now the time has come to cooperate, says Larry Kosmont, a consultant to municipalities. Kosmont suggests that “Riordan should lower or abolish the business license tax.” Los Angeles imposes far more and higher taxes on business than neighboring cities. That not only makes it uncompetitive but prevents it from easily sharing economic development resources with others.

Yet just such economic cooperation is the emerging strategy for Southern California communities. In southeastern L.A. County, 26 cities, including Long Beach, Cerritos, Downey and Paramount, have banded together in the Gateway Cities Consortium.

The city governments of Carson, Torrance and El Segundo are linked with private businesses in the South Bay Economic Development Partnership. And in other counties, cities are cooperating under the aegis of the Orange County Business Council and the Inland Empire Economic Partnership.

If Los Angeles could join such efforts, it would benefit the region and itself at the same time. The big city is the natural leader to speak out forcefully on issues such as new federal air-quality standards that threaten the region’s economy, from Santa Barbara south to Chula Vista.

And with a regional focus, Riordan could more effectively push for reform of the education system, a particular passion for the Princeton and University of Michigan graduate who founded Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Reform Now long before becoming mayor.

At a news conference after his inauguration Monday, Riordan complimented Carson’s effort to form its own school district and break away from the bloated L.A. Unified system. Riordan said that Carson, a predominantly blue-collar city of 88,000, has the right idea: a school district of 24 to 26 schools that would be manageable and accessible to local families.

But exercising regional leadership will be hard for Riordan, for several reasons. Most important, the Los Angeles mayor’s office is constitutionally weak. Riordan has no authority to deal directly in school matters, unlike Richard Daley of Chicago or Rudolph Giuliani of New York--strong mayors to whom Riordan is often compared.

Nor does he have the authority over the City Council to easily get his way. And so, not by nature a politician, he must learn to politic.

“He should repair relations with the City Council and lead with ideas rather than fiat,” says David Abel, publisher of the Planning Report and Metro Investment Report newsletters and a friend of Riordan.

Another friend acknowledges Riordan’s impatient side, saying, “He must avoid thinking of government officials as fools just because they’re not millionaires.”

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Yet difficulties aside, the possibilities are encouraging. The Los Angeles economy has joined California’s recovery and will add 100,000 jobs this year, according to the forecast of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. That gives the mayor and City Council room to maneuver.

And Riordan, at 66, is not running for another office. Rather, his mission, as he put it Monday, is to “prepare our children for the future” in one of the most significant cities in the world.

The challenge is formidable, but so are the possibilities for all of Southern California in Riordan’s next four years.

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Where the Money Goes

City and county governments in California retain a fraction of general property tax revenues collected from their residents. A look at how the 1995-96 property tax dollar was divided in each of six Southland counties:

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... and the For every dollar The Special cities** of property county Schools districts* get the tax revenue in: gets ... get ... get ... remainder: Los Angeles County 23cents 42cents 18cents 17cents Orange County 10cents 61cents 18cents 11cents Riverside County 13cents 48cents 33cents 6cents San Bernardino County 13cents 46cents 34cents 7cents San Diego County 14cents 63cents 11cents 12cents Ventura County 17cents 53cents 23cents 7cents

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* Includes levies for redevelopment agencies.

** Monies must be divided among cities in each county.

Source: State Board of Equalization

Researched by JENNIFER OLDHAM / Los Angeles Times