Let Voters Decide Fate of Hernandez

The Mike Hernandez case is full of hypocrisy.

First of all, there’s City Councilman Hernandez himself, who has admitted being addicted to cocaine and drinking a quart of tequila a night while sponsoring street signs on Pico Boulevard proclaiming “No Drugs, No Graffiti, the Neighborhood Is Watching.”

Not nearly in the same class, but also eligible for the hypocrites league are the members of the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Richard Riordan, who are demanding that Hernandez resign. They’ve relegated Hernandez’s poverty-stricken 1st District to the back of the bus for years, and are turning their attention to it, and its councilman, only after being bombarded with communications from constituents demanding his ouster.

If Hernandez wants to resign, fine. It’s a full-time job to recover from an addiction like his. Even then, some addicts fall off the wagon two, three or four times before making it. But he doesn’t appear ready to quit and his term runs until 2001.

In any case, his real judges and jury are the voters of his district, who are now being asked to sign petitions for a recall election. They’ve lived under his misrule. Let them have the satisfaction of kicking him out.

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I saw the results of his misrule Tuesday as I walked along Pico Boulevard, east of Normandie Avenue, with three recall campaigners, Al Molina, Rudy Renorio de Cordova and Pedro Hernandez.

We paused at Mariposa Avenue. Pedro Hernandez, no relation to the councilman, pointed to a storm sewer filled with decayed food, dirty plates, bottles and other debris. He said the litter was left by food vendors whose trucks line the curb on Mariposa. When the vendors are done, they sweep the garbage into the streets. After a good rainstorm, some of it ends up on the beach.

Hernandez assessed the debris with an understanding of city waste disposal gained in 22 years as a sanitation department employee. “You know the Lopez Canyon dump in the Valley,” he said. “This street’s the same thing.”

The street vendors not only mess up the sidewalks and streets, but they take business away from long-established businesses on Pico. Yolanda Rodriguez, whose family has owned the El Forolito restaurant for 24 years, is burdened with both garbage and business loss. On Monday, she and her dad spent two hours sweeping the sidewalks in the long block in front of the restaurant. She looked up at the trees, recently trimmed. “It’s the first time in years,” she said.

These are part of what Mayor Riordan likes to call “quality of life” issues, the dirt, grime and neglect that destroy a neighborhood’s morale and invite crime.

But there’s much worse going on in Hernandez’s district--which reaches from impoverished Pico-Union north through Dodger Stadium to portions of upscale Mt. Washington.

Drug dealers and gangs are powerful and prostitutes ever-present, despite strong law enforcement efforts to control them.

This has been going on for years, and even the best council representative could not cure the basic problems of the poorest parts of the 1st District. Impoverished immigrants from Central America and southern Mexico, many here illegally, live in some of America’s most crowded slums. Unemployment is high and many of the employed work in low-paid jobs in restaurants or the garment industry.

Whatever help the city can provide is diluted by the City Hall custom of equally dividing the limited social service and housing funds among 15 council districts, rich and poor alike. The failure to set priorities according to need has been tolerated by this mayor and his predecessors.

But a really sharp, hard-working council representative can overcome some of these limitations. A good council member flatters, cajoles and threatens department heads and their subordinates, pushing them to pay more attention to district needs.

The late Kenny Hahn knew that. In Los Angeles County government, where appropriations are divided among five districts, the road commissioner always put his friend Supervisor Hahn at the top of the list, giving him an edge in the competition for money.

But a lawmaker isn’t up to such difficult work after drinking a quart of tequila at night and snorting coke the next morning.

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The council has expressed little concern for the district’s troubles and little alarm in the past couple of years when Hernandez trembled and rambled during his City Council speeches. After his arrest, he returned to City Hall to public expressions of sympathy by the council and Riordan.

Opposition started within the district, from grass-roots activists who were furious about the drugs. “He said he was going to get rid of the drug dealers and he was going to another area and supporting the drug dealers,” said Demetrious Pantazis, who has owned a chicken and burger restaurant on Pico since 1968.

People like Pantazis launched the recall campaign, before council members and the mayor jumped in.

The recall people need real help. They have just 120 days to gather some 6,400 signatures to force a recall election. They’ve set up a hotline, (213) 769-5530.

These people had the guts to start the job. They and the voters of the 1st District deserve the chance to decide Hernandez’s fate.