Mayor’s Interest: Is It Flagging or Evolving?

As Mayor Richard Riordan winds through his second and final term, a number of critics say he increasingly seems disengaged from the business of running Los Angeles, spending more time addressing questions beyond his control and less governing the city that elected him.

A variety of city department heads, former Riordan aides and elected and appointed leaders say they have discerned a softening of the mayor’s oversight of some key departments and issues.

Colleagues complain of Riordan arriving unprepared for meetings. Aides say his attention flits from one topic to the next. Council members, including some of the mayor’s allies, report that they rarely hear from him and have almost no sense of how he does his job or what his agenda is.

In part, that reflects Riordan’s unorthodox style. Boundlessly energetic, he also sometimes is short-tempered and brusque. He will giggle over a radio comedy show one moment, snap at an aide the next. He continues to stumble through news conferences, while steadily increasing his mastery of chess.

Among the mayor’s supporters, however, those observations demonstrate nothing more than Riordan’s quirks. He and his allies say Riordan is hard at work and insist that, although it is true that his focus has shifted in the second term, it is more the result of his redoubled interest in reforming education than lost attention to other issues.

In an interview, Riordan stressed that none of his other interests detract from being mayor: “It just means I spend more time at the job.”

Nevertheless, in recent months, some fear that Riordan’s attention has drifted from the job. The mayor is newly married, and some observers believe that has distracted him, while others wonder whether he simply has tired of City Council clashes and challenges to his leadership.

Whatever the cause, the growing sense of his detachment has sent jitters through some of his supporters in the business community. Although few are willing to challenge Riordan publicly--evidence that he still inspires fear--there is significant concern that deepening problems at Los Angeles International Airport and the Alameda Corridor, among others, could portend setbacks for projects that business leaders believe are essential for the city’s progress.

The LAX expansion in particular is in disarray, with three new airport commissioners recently named, two leading consultants departed and a stiff challenge to the project’s very concept being mounted by City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

“He’s just not making these things happen,” said one prominent local investor. “He says he wants them, but what’s he doing about them?”

Dan Garcia, the outgoing president of the Airport Commission and a longtime local government insider, said he has heard growing criticism of Riordan’s handling of the LAX expansion efforts, which are contained in the so-called master plan. “During the last several months in particular, I have heard a number of concerns expressed to me by City Council and the business community about the direction taken by the mayor’s staff with respect to the master plan,” he said. “The jury’s still out on whether they understand what’s required.”

Riordan rejects those criticisms, saying he is working harder than ever and is confident of his administration’s success. What’s more, the mayor contends that he has succeeded in staffing many important city jobs with top-quality leaders, thereby diminishing the need for his personal involvement.

“I work through other people,” he said.

Chief of Staff Robin Kramer, who announced her resignation last week, agreed.

“The mayor is someone who believes, when you trust someone and appoint them to a responsible position, you trust them,” she said. “That is how he operates. It is decidedly different from how most people in public life operate.”

Nevertheless, there is a restless uneasiness among many Los Angeles leaders regarding Riordan’s focus.

Less Talk About Charter Reform

Take the issue of charter reform. The mayor, who once publicly trumpeted charter reform, all but dropped the issue after the two commissions were formed. Recently, he has begun to play a more significant behind-the-scenes role through his staff, but without his earlier enthusiasm for the undertaking, at least in his public comments.

Riordan supporters say his absence from the front lines is partly practical: It deprives his opponents of the chance to fight a new charter as a way of striking at him. But among charter reform proponents and skeptics, Riordan’s on-again-off-again participation in the debate has been the source of anger and has created confusion around issues such as the proposed creation of neighborhood councils.

In his State of the City address this year, Riordan stunned some business leaders by announcing support for elected neighborhood councils. That angered critics of the idea, who worry that it would splinter planning and hamper growth. Riordan’s abrupt endorsement convinced some that he had not thought the notion through or that he had caved in to the idea’s political popularity.

Meanwhile, among San Fernando Valley advocates of secession, Riordan is accused of not doing enough to promote those same councils, which they see as a bulwark against a powerful and unresponsive City Council.

While managing to antagonize both sides in that debate, Riordan has emerged as a consistently strong voice for educational reform, particularly during his second term. He has toured schools in Los Angeles and Maryland, and attended conferences in Detroit, Chicago and Washington. Rare is the speech that does not include a nod to education. Rarer is the week that he does not find time to meet with students.

In fact, Riordan’s renewed enthusiasm for championing reform of California’s schools has become the dominant theme of his public activities and occupies an increasingly large chunk of his private schedule as well. Although it clearly is an issue that moves him personally, critics say it is a curious focus because it involves an area where the mayor has utterly no authority and no power beyond that of the bully pulpit, which he has struggled to use effectively.

What all of that adds up to, in the minds of some people anyway, is a mayor adrift.

“He’s out there, he’s working, but he’s not focused,” said one observer who is often critical of Riordan. “What’s his vision for the city at this point?”

Another civic leader, this one a longtime ally of Riordan often cited by the administration as a friend, was more blunt: “He’s not just disengaged,” that leader said. “He’s checked out.”

Critics point to Riordan’s oversight of the Department of Water and Power as another troubling area of inattention. Riordan and his managers have been responsible for that agency for five years, but not until General Manager S. David Freeman took over last year did the DWP embark on a serious effort to confront its mammoth, threatening debt. What’s more, Freeman is publicly supportive of the mayor, but privately has told associates that he believes the administration has done little to support his campaign to slash the DWP’s debt in time to ready it for energy deregulation.

Supporters join with critics of the mayor in noting the shift in Riordan’s focus. But where critics see the mayor as disengaged in city affairs, backers say the shift in his focus is a tribute to his success, not a mark of his lapsed attention.

Bill Wardlaw, the mayor’s best friend and closest advisor, said Riordan’s new emphasis on education is not evidence of drifting focus, but rather a reflection of the “continual evolution of what he wants to accomplish.” He added that Riordan’s first term was extraordinarily successful, clearing away a number of issues that no longer need to be addressed as fervently in the second term.

As an example, many Riordan backers point to the Los Angeles Police Department. Aides acknowledge that Riordan is a less forceful presence there today, but they say that is not the result of the mayor losing interest, but rather of the confidence that Riordan has in Chief Bernard C. Parks. When Willie L. Williams was chief, they note, Riordan was not shy about intervening--to the point that LAPD bosses quietly grumbled about Riordan’s micro-management.

“He had to push Williams because Williams wasn’t working,” said one person close to Riordan. “Parks is a different story. He’s doing his job.”

Parks is just one of the many department general managers put in place by Riordan since he took office in 1993. Many of the city’s most important departments--from the LAPD to the Department of Water and Power to the airport and port--now are headed by Riordan appointees.

Riordan cited that turnover as evidence that he has helped put Los Angeles’ house in order, and that his style is to appoint strong leaders and then back off to let them do their jobs. With good leaders in place, the mayor said, it is now his job to let them go to work.

“I’ve done a good job in who I’ve picked,” he said. “I’ve done a good job, but I haven’t been perfect. I think we still have a ways to go.”

While replacing many of the city’s general managers, Riordan also has accomplished a number of the objectives that initially propelled him into office.

Expansion of the LAPD, by far Riordan’s biggest goal during his first term, fell short of what he promised voters in 1993 but nevertheless has resulted in the largest police department in Los Angeles history. Reform of the city’s permitting process for movie companies has been streamlined, and local filming has increased dramatically. The city’s economy is on far sounder footing, and crime is down more than 30%.

The crime and law enforcement achievements are in many ways the Riordan administration’s most important ones, and they were financed largely by the federal government. Riordan and his staff got that money, but their future success may depend in part on how badly Vice President Al Gore feels the need to keep the financial pipeline open.

Progress Harder in Second Term

Riordan administration insiders cite the first-term accomplishments with pride. His press secretary, responding to inquiries about the mayor’s focus, produced a long list of accomplishments as evidence that his determination has never wavered. For the first quarter of 1998, the list includes more than two dozen items.

They range from luring the Academy Awards to a new Hollywood home to touring a Maryland high school with President Clinton, from Riordan’s endorsement of the anti-bilingual education initiative to “renewed friendship and goodwill relations” with four sister cities that the mayor visited while in Asia.

“This mayor,” press secretary Noelia Rodriguez said emphatically, “has not lost any focus.”

Kramer agreed, and said the mayor recently met with top aides to produce a list of benchmarks for the coming three years. That strategic plan, Kramer said, is intended to keep the office from drifting as the administration winds down.

At the same time, supporters of the mayor say that progress these days is in some respects harder than it was during the first term. In part that is because, as one said, “the low-hanging fruit has all been plucked off the trees.”

Still, that has left a number of issues unresolved. Development reform, once a top priority of the Riordan team, no longer is much-discussed. Likewise, the drive to exempt more and more jobs from Civil Service protection has sputtered, as has the once-fierce determination to overhaul the city’s Public Works Department.

Although Riordan continues to favor those ideas, he has done little to advance them in the second term, backing away from some of the fights he once waded into.

His most recent budget, for instance, was warmly received by the council and passed almost without incident. The most controversial element was a proposed tax for cat licenses. The council deleted it, and Riordan signed the budget.

Among those who see the administration losing momentum, some cite the turnover within the Riordan team itself, particularly the departure of Michael Keeley, a longtime Riordan loyalist who managed economic issues during the first term. Abrasive and intelligent, Keeley focused on such internal reforms as improvement of the development process, drafting of the new City Charter and implementation of a far-reaching tax equity reform. Without Keeley’s leadership, those areas have moved more slowly, and Riordan’s emphasis on them has waned, sources close to the mayor concede.

Asked about his influence, Keeley demurred.

“It seems to me that the mayor has learned to pick his targets carefully,” Keeley said. “And as he chooses his strategic targets, it’s not just what he can accomplish, it’s what tugs the heartstrings.”

The earlier staff changes pale compared to what may come next. Kramer is leaving, and Deputy Mayor Stephanie Bradfield also is eyeing the door. Those two have the most public policy experience on the Riordan staff, and their absences will undoubtedly complicate the mayor’s job of keeping his team on track as his administration winds down.

New Chief of Staff, MTA Duties

On Tuesday, Riordan announced the appointment of a new chief of staff, 33-year-old Lesa Slaughter, who is amiable and intelligent but who lacks her predecessor’s political depth, and whose appointment again stirred concern that the mayor is entering a more complacent period in his administration.

Asked whether Slaughter could win the support of the staff she inherits--one that includes several deputies older than she and with longer government experience--Riordan expressed complete confidence in his choice. “If she can’t, I chose the wrong person,” he said.

Another complication in the mayor’s second term has been his ascension to the chairmanship of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Since taking that job last year, he has been deluged by the agency’s continuing financial fiascoes, and the MTA has gobbled up a disproportionate share of his time.

Riordan, who is fond of saying that “a day away from the MTA is like a month in the country,” agreed that the transportation agency has occupied much of his energy during the past year. But the mayor also stressed that his approach to running the MTA requires him to spend less time at it than some of his predecessors did.

“My approach is to be solving problems,” he said. “I don’t go to ribbon cuttings and events. . . . I’m not trying to be the inspirational leader of the MTA.”

As Riordan and his allies fend off the notion that his attention to his job has wavered, all insist that he is committed to governing the city through the final days of his final term.

“I want to improve every inch of this city,” Riordan said.

And Wardlaw said that the mayor’s continued commitment to public service is evident in such things as his campaigning for Proposition 227 in the recent statewide elections, his continued press for the development of downtown and his push to win approval for expansion of LAX.

“He continues to be committed to leaving the city fundamentally better than he found it,” Wardlaw said. “He ain’t in it for the money. . . . If he wanted to go off and party, he’s got the means to go off and party.”