City Charter Panels Near Accord on Key Issues

After months of quiet, dogged work, two commissions established to overhaul Los Angeles’ antiquated charter are nearly in accord over some of the document’s most important and controversial passages--those that spell out the relative powers of the mayor and City Council.

According to top officials with the city’s elected and appointed commissions, a soon-to-be-finished draft of the proposed charter will, in some key areas, strengthen the mayor’s authority and clip the council’s wings.

For instance, the existing charter gives the council power to approve the appointment and removal of a department head or city commissioner; the reforms being contemplated by the two commissions would allow the council to approve mayoral nominations, but would let the mayor fire a commissioner or department head without council review. That decision may well be reviewed, as some commission members have asked to reconsider it, but for now it seems to enjoy support on both panels.

Both commissions also are leaning toward expanding the council. The appointed group has suggested increasing it from 15 to 21; the elected panel has generally endorsed a bigger council without yet naming a number. Any expansion would dilute the power of the existing council by spreading its authority among more members.

And both commissions have tentatively settled on a revised government framework in which the mayor would be more firmly established as the top manager, with the City Council defined more strictly as a legislative or policy-making body. Although the council is likely to retain some powers that in the federal government are handled by the executive branch--approving contracts, for instance--for the most part, both commissions appear inclined to rein in the council’s managerial powers.

The two commissions continue to differ on significant points. Some members of the elected commission staff, for example, want the job of acting mayor to fall to a deputy mayor or appointed city attorney when the mayor is out of town; the appointed commission so far has favored leaving the City Council president with that assignment, as the current charter provides. Also, the elected commission seems inclined to give the mayor significantly more authority to reorganize city departments, while that idea is not particularly popular in the appointed body.

Nevertheless, Erwin Chemerinsky, the president of the elected commission, and George Kieffer, president of the appointed body, agreed that the two groups have found a surprising amount of common ground.

“In the vast, vast majority of issues, we have either agreement with the other commission or we have an area that the commissions have not taken up directly,” Kieffer said. “About 95% is agreed upon. The other 5% is being given to our conference committee to work over.”

The issues involving mayoral and council power are just a few of those that could inflame the politics of charter reform. The debate over neighborhood councils has become heated and so far shows little sign of compromise--a special group convened by Chemerinsky has met twice but has not made any recommendations. Meanwhile, competing suggestions for organizing the city attorney’s office are on the table, and have pitted Mayor Richard Riordan against City Atty. James K. Hahn, who may be a candidate for mayor in the next election.

The proposals to strengthen mayoral power are sure to touch off a political fracas at City Hall, where council members have long protected their authority and effectively resisted attempts to erode it. Riordan has argued that his successors need more day-to-day management authority in order to run the city efficiently, and that argument appears to have persuaded many of the commissioners.

Early in the charter reform debate, many observers predicted that the appointed and elected commissions would butt heads on the issue of splitting power between the council and mayor, in part because of the way they were formed. Riordan launched the reform effort, only to be sideswiped by the council, which named its own panel. Riordan then declined to appoint anyone to that group and backed a slate of candidates for the elected commission instead. The mayor’s endorsed candidates did not fare especially well, and in recent months Riordan has struck a lower profile on the issue, though he continues to work behind the scenes.

Because of the way they were formed, the elected commission wields more authority than its appointed counterpart. The appointed panel can make recommendations for a new charter, but the City Council would have the final word on what makes it to the ballot, presumably next June. The elected commission, by contrast, can take its work directly to the voters.

As a matter of tactics, however, the two groups have decided to cooperate on much of their work.

Chemerinsky said the common approach is intended partly to head off a mess at the ballot box. Leaders of both commissions, he said, want to avoid a situation in which voters are confronted with competing charters and confusing campaigns. The result of that, he and others fear, would be rejection of all alternatives.