Group Opposes Mayor’s Call for Local Panels

A day after Mayor Richard Riordan endorsed neighborhood councils as a reform in Los Angeles city government, a powerful group of business executives, including some of his closest associates, rejected the idea.

The Los Angeles Business Advisors, a recently formed group of 24 major corporate chief executive officers, declared Thursday that charter reforms establishing neighborhood councils “could create an additional, complex layer of government with the power to delay or obstruct, but which would not be accountable for the economic or human costs of its decisions.”

Neighborhood councils with formal decision-making authority would be “particularly troubling,” the group added in a letter addressed to leaders of elected and appointed commissions that are attempting to draft a revised charter and submit it to voters next spring.

The business alliance, whose existence has conjured up images of the vastly more influential downtown business group known as the Committee of 25 that effectively ran Los Angeles until two decades ago, said it did not oppose City Council members setting up informal, advisory councils.

But the group said that a new charter’s primary answer to a quest for more neighborhood empowerment should come from a vastly expanded City Council.

The group said that having 33 to 35 City Council districts of roughly 100,000 constituents apiece--rather than the current 15 districts with a national record 250,000 each--would give residents greater access to representatives who would, in turn, more accurately reflect them. “Filipinos, Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Armenians and other ethnic groups could gain one or more seats,” the group said.

The group, which includes three members of the board of directors of Times Mirror Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, suggested that expansion could be accomplished without additional costs, primarily because smaller districts could lead to smaller council staffs.

The Business Advisors, which has in the past declined to disclose a list of its members, did so for the first time Thursday in releasing its charter stances, which also included a call for greater mayoral executive authority.

The members were listed as Mike R. Bowlin of Arco; Stephen F. Bollenbach of Hilton Hotels Corp.; Alton Brann of UNOVA; Eli Broad of Sun America Inc.; John E. Bryson of Edison International, a member of the Times Mirror board; Ronald W. Burkle of the Yucaipa Companies; David A. Coulter of Bank of America; Martin D. Feinstein of Farmers Group Inc.; Richard M. Ferry of Korn/Ferry International; Paul Hazen of Wells Fargo Bank; Yoshio Ishizaka of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc., and Bruce Karatz of Kaufman & Broad Home Corp.

Also: Robert F. Maguire III of Maguire Partners; Tom McKernan of the Auto Club of Southern California; James F. McNulty of Parsons Corp.; Charles Miller of Avery Dennison; Peter W. Mullin of Mullin Consulting Inc.; Ron L. Olson of Munger, Tolles & Olson; Joan A. Payden of Payden & Rygel, who is also a Times Mirror director; Charles Rinehart of H.F. Ahmanson & Co.; Steven B. Sample of USC; Charles Schetter of McKinsey & Company; Mark H. Willes of Times Mirror, who is also publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and Willis B. Wood Jr. of Pacific Enterprises.

Deputy Mayor Stephanie Bradfield said Riordan, who endorsed the idea of advisory neighborhood councils but has been silent on City Council expansion, welcomes the dissent. “People from all parts of Los Angeles are getting involved in a serious public policy debate about how the city should be governed and that’s a healthy thing.”