Wachs Joins Ranks, but He Is Hardly Welcomed Into the Arena

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs may have finally embraced a downtown sports arena proposal, but that doesn’t mean that other project supporters are welcoming him into their ranks with open arms.

For months, Wachs has opposed the project, arguing that the city should not subsidize the construction of a $300-million arena to house multimillionaire athletes.

After weeks of promising to put an initiative on the ballot that gives voters the right to decide if the city should subsidize sports developments, Wachs agreed last week to exempt the downtown arena from the initiative.

Wachs changed his mind after the developer offered an “ironclad guarantee” that all city subsidies would be repaid. The developer also agreed to pay $4.8 million for land that the city was offering for a song.

But other arena supporters still hold some resentment toward Wachs, particularly Steven L. Soboroff, a senior advisor to Mayor Richard Riordan, who helped negotiate the original arena deal that Wachs so harshly criticized.

In an e-mail letter, Soboroff accused Wachs of taking credit for the work of many other people who negotiated the original arena deal.

Soboroff concedes that Wachs improved the deal slightly but said Wachs then took credit for the entire effort.

“In dropping an inch of frosting on a very large cake, then taking sole credit (at the expense of many of your colleagues) for baking the entire cake and for saving world hunger . . . you will see that you made numerous critical long-term errors,” said the message.

“You take the masses for fools, and they aren’t,” the letter continued. “Nice way to exist.”

If the project is ever built, don’t expect to see Wachs and Soboroff clasping hands during the groundbreaking ceremony.

Image Lift

Forget about “quien es mas macho.” When Angelenos start comparing their cabbies and their tow-truck drivers, the question will more likely be: “Quien es mas sensitivo?”

For its 4,000 cabbies, the city has earmarked $100,000 to provide “sensitivity training” so that taxi drivers can learn to be more courteous toward minorities, the elderly and the disabled.

Not to be outdone, the owners of L.A.’s officially registered police garages are going in for some image enhancement of their own, enrolling their tow-truck drivers in etiquette classes to be given by a Valley academic. And, they say, the $20,000 cost will be out of their own pockets, not the taxpayers’.

“Although [we] work principally for the city of Los Angeles, no tax dollars are being used to support this training,” said Gary Minzer, president of the Official Garage Assn., taking a swipe at city officials who approved the $100,000 for cabbie sensitivity sessions earlier this month.

It’s true that tow-truck drivers don’t top the list for being friendly, sensitive and reasonable. Who loves the guy who impounds your car because you parked for five minutes in a red zone on Ventura Boulevard?

But with the services of Valley College speech and communications professor James Marteney, Minzer said, the drivers will “learn the behaviors that help them stand out above the competition,” including how to deal with angry people in difficult situations and how to sharpen telephone skills. “That’s nice,” said James Okazaki, head of the city’s transit programs, whose department came up with the taxi-driver training plan.

So why not subsidize the tow-truck drivers’ etiquette lessons, too?

Okazaki said that the city’s cab companies already pay for some form of sensitivity training for their drivers, just as the police garage owners are doing. “We’re only augmenting what’s already in place,” he said.

Making the Grade

Call it a tale of two lawmakers.

This week, when Gov. Pete Wilson completed final approval of the state budget, he cut a funding program that Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles) had sought for Glendale while approving money that state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) requested for programs in Burbank.

Wildman, a freshman from the San Gabriel Valley, asked for $1 million to build a library that could be used by Edison Elementary School students as well as nearby residents.

He also asked for another $250,000 to build a park to honor disabled children who attend College View School.

The projects had been rejected in an earlier version of the budget, and Wilson used his line-item veto to nix both projects in the final budget version.

But the governor approved $450,000 that Schiff has been calling for to pay for improvements at John Muir Middle School in Burbank.

The improvements will help the school plug into computers and related equipment.

Wilson also approved $125,000 that Schiff requested for after-school programs in the Glendale Unified School District.

Schiff announced his legislative victories with news releases emblazoned with a picture of a smiling Schiff at the top.

Meanwhile, Wildman issued a news release bearing a headline that read: “Wilson vetoes local programs--again.”

In an interview, Wildman didn’t pull any punches to explain why he got the shaft while Schiff got the bucks.

“It’s very clear,” he said.

“I think Wilson has been a politician his entire life, and I’m the first Democrat to represent this district. He is essentially punishing the citizens of Glendale for electing a Democrat.”

Schiff is also a Democrat, but Wildman said he has also locked horns with Wilson over other issues, such as a school testing program.

Despite his defeat, he promised to request the funding again during the next session.

“They are good projects, anyone who looked at them would see that,” Wildman said.

Surprise! We’re Seceding

When Gov. Pete Wilson signed the so-called Valley secession bill on Sunday, local representatives on the Los Angeles City Council were caught unawares.

Mike Feuer found out from a reporter. Laura Chick heard the news from an aide who called her on the East Coast.

And Richard Alarcon received word while up in San Francisco for a conference being put on, ironically, by the League of California Cities, which adamantly opposed the bill.

“There were a lot of jokes about the San Fernando Valley--the city of,” Alarcon said.

But the conference was short on actual discussion of AB 62, even though the league had lobbied against it and other member cities feared its passage.

“It wasn’t on the agenda because we didn’t know exactly what was going to happen with it,” said Dwight Stenbakken, the league’s legislative director, who was as caught by surprise by the timing of the governor’s decision as anybody.

“We didn’t get much of an indication. They were playing it pretty close to the vest.”

Now that the bill is a done deal, the league is sending bulletins to its members to inform them of the bill’s ramifications. Stenbakken said the next step will be to watch a test case go through to tease out whatever bugs are in the secession process--and that test case may well be the Valley.

Wish You Weren’t Here

Readers of this column know that two weeks ago, City Councilman Nate Holden accused colleague Laura Chick of meddling in his district in order to shore up support for an eventual run for mayor.

“She’s going to get as close to the mayor’s office as she’s going to get to the presidency,” Holden scoffed.

As she toured Washington this past week for both work and pleasure, Chick toyed with a retort: sending a postcard of the White House to Holden with the message, “So I’m here--and you’re not.”

But time slipped away.

“I should’ve, but I never did” send the card, Chick said, back in L.A. for Wednesday’s council meeting. “I’m so mad!”

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QUOTABLE: “It’s common in history for people to lose power to the government. It’s a rare instance when government loses power to the people.”

--Assemblyman Tom McClintock, on the signing of the Valley secession bill