Wachs’ Uphill Fight Against Arena Secrecy

In a City Hall where success means marching to the same regimented beat, Councilman Joel Wachs has often been out of step.

That’s certainly the case when it comes to the proposed $270-million downtown arena, which is supported by most of his colleagues, Mayor Richard Riordan and the two most powerful outside political forces in city politics, business and organized labor.

Against all odds, Wachs next Tuesday will ask his colleagues to join him on a quest to make public a key portion of the arena deal--two leases that supposedly guarantee that the Kings and Lakers will play in the facility for 25 years. At present, they are under wraps, mandated by a confidentiality agreement the city signed with the arena developers. Joining him in the request is Councilwoman Laura Chick.

Good luck, Joel. I’ve been trying for two weeks without success to unlock the secret. For without the guarantee, there is no assurance that the National Basketball Assn. and National Hockey Assn. teams will remain in the arena. And if they depart for fancier quarters in a few years, we taxpayers get stuck for the $70 million we are putting into the deal.

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I’m not surprised that Wachs goes against the majority. It’s been that way with him since he first ran for the City Council, and won, in 1971.

That’s when I first met him. I was a newcomer at The Times, covering my first local race. Wachs was a young attorney who had challenged a veteran incumbent, Jim Potter, and his developer backers, who controlled City Hall.

The San Fernando Valley side of the Santa Monica Mountains wasbeing ripped up for vast residential developments in a market that fulfilled the old L.A. dream of getting rich by buying, selling and developing land. On the Valley floor, there was a service station on every major corner, usually allowed there by zoning deals approved by the City Council.

In that era, the homeowner groups who opposed the gas stations and the hill-flattening developments were shunned in a City Hall run by Mayor Sam Yorty and a council that agreed with him on development. Those few environmentalists who called for preservation of the Santa Monica Mountains were considered kooks, to use a favorite word from that era.

Wachs walked the hillside subdivisions while his parents worked the supermarkets on the flatlands. With limited funds, he put together a smart campaign in an incredibly bitter battle. Feelings were so intense that when I reported, after interviewing voters in the hills of Studio City, that Wachs’ opponent was in trouble, I was pilloried by a hillside weekly newspaper.

Wachs won in an upset, and on the council continued to march to his own tune. He ran for mayor in 1973, offending many of his backers, who were for Tom Bradley. Later, he went against prevailing City Hall sentiment when advocating laws against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or having AIDS. Both eventually became law, as did another Wachs anti-establishment move--forcing developers to pay fees to support art projects.

The arena is a much greater challenge.

Los Angeles’ most powerful business and labor leaders--both big campaign contributors--believe that the facility is necessary for the economic revival of a city recovering from riot, recession and earthquake.

Their lobbyist corps, consisting of just about every big spender at City Hall, has been hammering home this message.

I could see Wachs was in trouble when I talked Wednesday with Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a strong liberal who usually casts a suspicious eye toward the establishment, especially toward business.

Goldberg said that, unlike Wachs, she does not have to personally examine the leases that guarantee that the Lakers and Kings will play here for 25 years. She said she is satisfied with the current arrangement, of having the city’s attorneys check out the leases and report back to the council. “It’s good enough for me,” she said. “They have only the city’s interests at heart.”

If the skeptical Goldberg feels that way, it’s increasingly likely that the arena will be approved, and the leases will remain secret.

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Such secrecy is deplorable on symbolic grounds alone. But beyond that, it sets a bad precedent for the city.

Remember, Mayor Riordan is a strong advocate for a number of government functions being contracted out to private enterprise.

This can encourage secrecy in government. For example, in this case, the developers argue that the contracts are confidential because they were between three private parties--the arena developers and the two teams.

Their contention ignores the fact that the city is contributing to the cost of the arena, clearly making it a public project.

In 1983, a state appellate court ruled that financial data of a private company doing city work was a public record. It said state law authorized public inspection of every conceivable kind of record involved in the governmental process.

That’s not happening in Los Angeles.

By the way, you’ll get a chance to ask Mayor Riordan about this next week. He will appear on the city’s cable channel, Channel 35, at 8 p.m. Thursday, July 24, on the live call-in show “Los Angeles Tonight.”