Chick Wants Productive Working Relationship With Hernandez

Mayor Richard Riordan has called on him to resign, saying his arrest and guilty plea to cocaine possession sends a “terrible, terrible message” to young people. Others see him as a bad role model for their children.

But Councilman Mike Hernandez still represents the 1st District--and still sits on a council committee dealing with gangs and juvenile justice.

And still with him on the committee are Mike Feuer and Laura Chick, the two council members who last month broke ranks with their colleagues to become the first city officials to publicly call on Hernandez to step down.

Asked if it undermined the committee’s credibility to have an admitted drug offender participating in decisions on justice for young people, Chick said: “I don’t have concerns or feelings about his being on this committee.

“It hasn’t been an issue for me. I’ve made my views clear and known, but have seen and accepted that my colleague is remaining on the council, so my focus has been on having a productive relationship with him,” said Chick.

“It’s really more in image and implicit messages . . . than his ability to do the job,” she added, acknowledging that it could seem incongruous that Hernandez, now enrolled in a drug-diversion program, should serve on a committee that aims to keep the city’s youths out of trouble.

Feuer declined to comment. “I’ve said all I have to say on the subject,” he said tersely.

For now, Chick, Feuer and Hernandez must remain strange bedfellows lying in a bed made by council President John Ferraro, who assigned Hernandez before his arrest to the Juvenile Justice Committee and has so far allowed him to stay on it.

But “I might have to look at that,” said Ferraro, who with other officials quietly pressured Hernandez into resigning from his position as assistant president pro tem of the council last month. “I can understand why there might be some concern.”

Gang Tackled

Even though Rep. Brad Sherman graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, he found out last week that you can’t learn everything from a book.

The lesson came as Sherman was addressing students at Canoga Park High School about what it’s like to be a freshman congressman from Sherman Oaks.

In an attempt at humor, Sherman told the students that before he was a congressman he practiced one of the most exciting professions around: He was a CPA.

The comment drew an immediate response from the students, who began to hoot and laugh.

Sherman apparently thought his joke was a hit and continued with his talk.

Off stage, however, Times photographer Richard Derk, who was on hand to shoot a pictorial of Sherman, notified a Sherman aide that in Canoga Park “CPA” stands for something other than Certified Public Accountant. It is an abbreviation for a local gang: Canoga Park Alabama.

After the speech, the aide told Sherman the real reason he got such a response from his little joke about being a CPA.

An embarrassed Sherman then moved to the door of the auditorium, where he greeted each teenager and acknowledged to several of the students the lesson he had just learned.

Obviously, Harvard did not offer “Gang Jargon 101” when Sherman was there.

Game Show

Who says that serving on the Los Angeles City Council is a nonpartisan job?

Sitting as president pro tem, Councilman Joel Wachs adjourned last Friday’s council meeting with a decidedly partisan last shot: “Go, Bruins!”

Not that the rallying cry, uttered the day before UCLA routed USC in their annual football matchup, really should have surprised anyone. Wachs, a former UCLA student body president, is unabashedly loyal to his alma mater and makes no bones about it.

But there was an extra sting in the tail of Wachs’ plug for the Bruins: He delivered it while sitting in the raised chair normally occupied by Ferraro, a onetime USC All-American tackle. The council president took it in stride.

“He’s president pro tem--he can do what he wants,” said Ferraro, laughing as he added: “There’s always another day.”

For his part, Wachs is unrepentant, reveling in UCLA’s seven-year win streak after years in the football wilderness against USC, which Trojan supporters on the council never hesitated to point out back then. “We went for years with their rubbing our faces in it,” said Wachs, whose collection of news clippings on his desk this week included one with the headline, “Torching the Trojans.”

“We went through a lot of lean years,” he said. “Now it’s our turn.”

Race Course

As the chief champion of arming the city’s park rangers, City Councilman Richard Alarcon was determined to put in his two cents at Tuesday’s council meeting when the council took up the debate (and ultimately voted against him).

Because he wrote a minority report on the issue--he was the only member of the council’s Public Safety Committee to recommend arming the rangers--Alarcon was entitled to more than the usual three minutes allotted to council members to speak.

“I get six minutes,” Alarcon said, “because I wrote a minority report.”

“That’s because you’re a minority,” put in Councilman Hal Bernson, who sat a chair away.

The people nearby laughed. “I’ll let you get away with that one, Hal,” Alarcon retorted, half-smiling and shaking his head. Later, he said he was not offended by Bernson’s wisecrack. “It usually depends on the intonation. I know he was just kidding.”

Maybe, but Bernson was also just wrong with the facts, at least when it comes to the racial distribution of the city he serves.

According to Claritas Inc., a market-research company, last year the ethnic makeup of Los Angeles was 45.5% Latino and 30.7% white--which puts Alarcon squarely in the plurality, not the minority.

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QUOTABLE: “At a fundamental level, I’m trying to build confidence in the democratic process.”

--Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg, explaining why he was meeting constituents in front of a supermarket.