Charter Panel Meets; First Topic Money

At its first meeting Monday night, a citizens panel elected to overhaul the 72-year-old charter that acts as the Los Angeles city constitution got hung up on a vital question: Who should pay for the job?

The panel members spent most of the first meeting debating whether they should be bankrolled by private contributions that Mayor Richard Riordan has promised to collect or public funds offered by the City Council.

Several commission members said it should not accept public funds because voters were promised during the campaign debate over whether to create the panel that it would cost no tax dollars, operating instead on private contributions.

“I think we are going to deceive the public if we accept public funding,” said Commissioner Dennis Zine, an LAPD sergeant. “I am adamantly opposed to deceiving the public.”

But other members argued that the panel should accept city funding to quickly begin its work. Commissioner Erwin Chemerinsky, a USC law professor, said the panel “almost has no choice but to ask [the council] to fund us.”

Riordan promised to bankroll the commission’s 18-month effort with private contributions, including at least $300,000 from his own pocket. However, neither the mayor nor any of his staff attended the first meeting to assure the panel that he would make good on his promise.

At the end of the debate, the panel decided to create a subcommittee to further study the question and meet again July 21.

The 15-member Charter Commission, sworn in June 30, was created largely as a result of Riordan’s efforts. In April, Los Angeles voters overwhelmingly approved a Riordan ballot measure to create the panel with the mission of drafting a new charter to make city government more responsive and efficient.

The idea of using public funding came from several City Council members, who said they feared that being financed by Riordan and his private contributors could influence the panel’s work.

In other action, the panel selected as its interim president Gloria Romero, a professor and college trustee. During the election, Romero ran unopposed and was supported by Riordan and the city’s powerful labor unions.

The charter reform effort was launched last summer in response to secession threats from the San Fernando Valley. Riordan and the City Council both argued that a better alternative would be to rewrite the 680-page charter, which forms the framework that guides the city bureaucracy.

All sides agreed that the charter is outdated and creates government gridlock. But Riordan and the council disagreed on how to change it.

The mayor led and largely funded a petition drive to put a measure on the ballot that would allow voters to create a citizens panel with the power to put a new charter directly on the ballot.

But the council worried that Riordan, a millionaire businessman, would use his considerable personal wealth to bankroll campaigns by his own slate of candidates for the panel.

The council, therefore, voted to appoint and fund a 21-member reform panel limited to recommending charter changes to the council, which will have the final say on what is submitted to the voters.

The council has already agreed to spend $1.4 million on staff and other expenses for that panel through June 1998. The panel officially began working in November.