Riordan Launches Projects Targeting Jobs, Child Health

On the first day of his second term in office Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan promised a series of fresh starts: a crusty turnaround artist to manage the city’s troubled Department of Water and Power; health care for hundreds of thousands of uninsured children; and economic renewal for two depressed spots, the Figueroa corridor and the abandoned General Motors plant in Panorama City.

Hoping to create a lasting legacy for the city that he will govern through the turn of the century, a beaming Riordan used a whirlwind tour to launch the initiatives that will touch the lives of every Angeleno and assist two of his most important constituencies--San Fernando Valley voters and Latinos.

Emphasizing a broad-based spirit of cooperation with the City Council, unions, corporate and nonprofit groups, the mayor nominated a new general manager to lead America’s largest municipally owned power company into the turbulent era of electricity deregulation, and stopped off in Boyle Heights to announce formation of a high-level panel to bring newly available federal help to the city’s 300,000 children, most of them Latinos, who lack health insurance.

He then headed for Exposition Park, where, before announcing his continued support for a return of NFL football to the Coliseum and revitalization of the Figueroa corridor, he surprised visitors waiting to buy lunch at a McDonald’s catering truck by getting into line with them for a burger and fries and mugging for photographs with their children.

Then he left for Panorama City, where he announced that the abandoned auto plant, which employed 2,600 workers on the day it closed in 1992 and has since been seen as a symbol of Valley economic despair, would once again be the site of more than 2,000 jobs--this time in a retail and light industrial complex to be known as “The Plant.”

From the standpoint of the city’s overall fiscal health, the day’s most serious business was accomplished first with the mayor’s announcement that he was nominating an experienced power company executive, S. David Freeman, to take over the reins at the DWP.

Freeman, who has headed the Tennessee Valley Authority, the New York Power Authority and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and has been an architect of California’s plunge into deregulation, was selected after a national search in which Councilwoman Ruth Galanter and the union representing DWP workers participated.

Brian D’Arcy, the head of that union, called Freeman a “friend of workers.” But it was clear to some DWP employees that, as one put it, “The good old days are over.”

Freeman said his primary strategy in helping the DWP ready itself for a coming era in which property owners and businesses will be able to buy electricity from whomever they wish will be to slash operating expenses.

“We’re going to cut costs, and then we’re going to cut costs and then we’re going to cut costs again,” he said.

As an alternative, Freeman said in an interview, the debt-burdened utility could also seek to temporarily raise rates--and use the increased proceeds to pay down its $8-billion debt.

By reducing debt payments, as private utilities have already taken steps to do, the DWP could afford to drastically reduce its rates in the future.

“Those options need to be looked at,” he said.

From the standpoint of public health, the mayor’s most important announcement came outside White Memorial Hospital on the city’s Eastside, when he repeated what has become almost a mantra: “I believe that every child that comes into this world has a God-given right to the tools to compete. That means excellent nutrition, excellent health care and excellent education.”

Riordan announced formation of a Commission on Healthy Kids consisting of a Who’s Who in California health care with a mission of “making certain that every child has access to excellent health care.”

Commission members said they would seek to accomplish their mission in part by making health services available at schools, developing less expensive health insurance and seeking ways to bring into Medi-Cal large numbers of working poor who, for various reasons including fear of being deported, have not enrolled.

As many as 700,000 children in the county lack medical insurance, even though about 300,000 are eligible for coverage under Medi-Cal, officials said. In the city, about 300,000 children lack health insurance of any sort.

Health care experts immediately lauded formation of the commission, saying it was politically well-timed, coming as additional money for children’s health care appears headed this way.

President Clinton was in town only last week, touting a budget plan that includes $16 billion to expand health care for children. At the same time, Kaiser Permanente pledged to donate $100 million for that purpose in California alone. Riordan’s 16 appointees come from an enormous range of perspectives and experience: the health care industry, children’s advocacy, the public sector and politics. The group will be led by departing deputy mayor Gary Mendoza, a former California Commissioner of Corporations.

Rather than clashing with ongoing efforts in the county, the mayor’s initiative will strengthen those projects, said commissioner David Chernof, chief medical officer of L.A. Care, one of two competing managed care plans for Medi-Cal patients in Los Angeles County.

“You’ve got all the people concerned talking about this together,” he said. “We’ve never linked together before, held hands and created a critical mass. I’m very excited about this.”

In his Exposition Park appearance, Riordan was joined by City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas for a tour of a new science museum under construction there.

Outfitted in hard hats, the two talked glowingly about other planned renovations--including sodding parking lots adjacent to the Coliseum so that they can double as soccer fields, building a bike path around the park and redoing the park’s swim facility as a more vibrant community center.

They also talked about bigger plans to revitalize the 20-odd blocks of Figueroa Street from Exposition Park to the planned sports arena near the Convention Center by encouraging multimedia entrepreneurs to locate there and working with local businesses, which have already agreed to tax themselves to pay for trees and other improvements.

And they talked optimistically about the linchpin of redevelopment for the area--attracting a National Football League team to the Coliseum.

“[Raiders owner] Al Davis never got past the beer stand,” joked Riordan. “He never saw all this.”

Riordan then headed for the San Fernando Valley, where he and Councilman Richard Alarcon announced a $100-million retail development for the abandoned GM plant, to be anchored by a 16-screen Mann Theater, a Home Depot, an Office Max and a Babies ‘R Us. It is slated to open next spring.

Riordan succeeded in getting a $4-million federal grant to pay for streets to serve the complex.

“This is a symbol that the San Fernando Valley is not just back, but better,” the mayor said.

* THE BIGGER PICTURE

The entire region could benefit from Riordan’s second term, James Flanigan writes. D1