SPECIAL REPORT: In clash over how to replace County-USC Medical Center, Supervisor Molina’s pressure tactics leave her . . . : Confronting Isolation Amid Colleagues’ Fury

In the heat of last week’s political battle over how to replace the earthquake-damaged County-USC Medical Center, Supervisor Gloria Molina publicly called her colleague Zev Yaroslavsky “a liar,” and accused him of doing nothing to help Los Angeles’ poor.

No surprise there.

Molina and Yaroslavsky have been at swords’ points since their contentious years together on the Los Angeles City Council. They remain antagonists, even though Yaroslavsky is one of only two other liberal Democrats on the county Board of Supervisors.

But Molina crossed a far more significant political Rubicon during the acrimonious deliberations Tuesday. She alienated the board’s other liberal Democrat, chairwoman Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

The problems arose when Molina brusquely refused to go along with Burke’s ultimately successful efforts to forge a compromise to build a 600-bed replacement hospital in Molina’s own Eastside district--and a 150-bed annex later, should the need arise.

“Gloria stabbed [Burke] in the back,” one top county official said of Molina’s tactics, which seemed intended to make Burke look bad in front of the crowd and a half-dozen TV cameras present for the debate.

As a consequence, the normally restrained Burke was furious, afterward referring to Molina only as “that woman.”

In fact, county officials and political observers say that Molina’s intransigence and open hostility to Burke, Yaroslavsky and her other colleagues on the issue of County-USC has left the combative Eastside lawmaker with no allies on the board.

“With Gloria, it became all or nothing,” says Supervisor Don Knabe, who joined Yaroslavsky in supporting Burke’s compromise. “It may have helped her in the community. But politically? It absolutely did not.”

Like Molina, Burke is a Democrat and woman of color, who represents mostly poor and minority constituents, and who often is at odds with Yaroslavsky, Knabe and Mike Antonovich--the three white men on the board who represent far more affluent county residents.

So the rift with Burke bodes ill for Molina, say observers of county politics, where back-room consensus-building among five powerful supervisors is often the difference between victory and defeat on issues involving the division of literally billions of dollars in health, welfare and law enforcement funds. Today, it may be hospital beds. Tomorrow, it could be courthouse construction money, an abused children’s shelter or clinics for the mentally ill.

“On the difficult issues when it’s a close call and you have to go to [other supervisors] . . . and say, ‘This is important to me.’ That’s where you are going to see the impact,” Knabe says. “Long term? In compromising kinds of issues, you may see this coming up down the road.”

Conservative Antonovich says that Molina only exacerbated an already uncomfortable political situation. He noted that after the vote Tuesday, Molina “boycotted” an executive session the board held to discuss ongoing labor contract negotiations and a medical malpractice settlement proposal that he said Molina had put on the agenda.

“The other four [board] members work very closely together. That will continue,” says Antonovich. “It would be better if all five of us could work together. It would help in addressing county issues and enhance our [political] effectiveness on the state and federal levels.”

According to Antonovich, “the problem is that [Molina] hasn’t outgrown the ‘terrible twos.’ Gloria believes in government by tantrum instead of by reason and compromise, and you can’t have emotional outbursts like that and expect to achieve your goals.”

Molina acknowledged her colleagues’ unhappiness in an interview Friday, but said, “I’m not here to meet their needs. I’m here to meet the needs of the constituents I represent. . . . I didn’t get elected by Yvonne or any other member of the board.”

Moreover, Molina asserts, professionals in the medical community believe, as she does, that the county needs to build a 750-bed replacement hospital for County-USC, which currently has about 850 patients.

“Of course the [board] members are upset,” Molina said. “People do not like to see these kinds of confrontations. They’d much rather see me roll right over, but I’m not going to do that.”

Molina Calls Burke Inflexible

Molina said she regretted calling Yaroslavsky a liar, saying she should have said he was “not telling the truth.”

But she said Burke was the one who was being inflexible, and that Burke backed down to political pressure. Asked whether she believes a rift now has opened between her and Burke, Molina said, “That’s up to her.”

In fact, all four of her colleagues accuse Molina of refusing to accept the hard fiscal reality that the county cannot afford to build a 750-bed hospital, at a projected cost of $1 billion, and have the money to operate it. Antonovich wanted to build a 500-bed hospital, and might have gotten the other supervisors to go along had it not been for Burke’s compromise.

And Molina’s tactics in the County-USC controversy infuriated her colleagues.

At first, Molina insisted, as she has for years, that the county needs to build at least a 750-bed hospital next to the existing Boyle Heights facility.

She then offered her own “compromise” during the deliberations, which were held in an auditorium jammed with supporters bused in by Molina’s staff. She proposed that the supervisors build the $80-million annex at the same time as the replacement hospital, and pointedly called on Burke to second her motion, so it could be voted on.

But Molina, as her staff confirms, already knew that Burke and the other supervisors had rejected such a plan during the several days of back-room negotiations proceeding the public session.

But she put Burke on the spot anyway. And, when Burke declined to support Molina’s motion, she was greeted with boos and jeers.

“I have been called everything under the sun by that woman,” Burke said later, in an interview. “I have tried my best to bring a group of people who represent very different districts together. I think I reached a reasonable compromise.

“I am just exasperated,” Burke continued. “As hard as you try, there are people who will never have any reasonableness. She knows better than I do that you have to get three votes to get anything through this board.”

Molina Urged State to Block Funds

Yaroslavsky refused to comment on the political ramifications of Tuesday’s battle. But he was so angry with Molina during the deliberations that he directed his staff to find all the times he had voted to help the poor. Then, he publicly confronted Molina with the information to set the record straight.

In fact, both Burke and Yaroslavsky were so irritated by Molina’s rhetoric that they came within moments of proposing that the county build a 600-bed hospital and nothing more, depriving Molina’s district of 150 additional beds, if they are needed. The 600-bed motion was actually typed up and circulated and the supervisors’ potential votes counted before Burke softened her position and insisted on the annex as part of the deal.

“They were just going to go with the 600 beds, boom, and get on with it,” says Knabe. “It was very acrimonious.”

In the end, the board voted 3-2 for the new hospital and annex with Molina and Antonovich dissenting.

Since Tuesday, Burke has downplayed the rift with Molina. But members of Burke’s staff and other county officials confirmed that the tension between the two lawmakers had been building for months, and continues. Burke was becoming increasingly frustrated with what her staff describes as Molina’s pointed refusals to work toward a compromise between the supervisors and a coalition of mostly Latino lawmakers in Sacramento, who are holding up $225 million in much-needed construction funds for the hospital.

Molina actually encouraged the state legislators to block the funds, as a way of pressuring her colleagues to build 750 beds.

Her colleagues refused to back down, saying the state lawmakers were meddling in their affairs and that they’d build a 500-bed hospital if Sacramento didn’t loosen the purse strings.

Many county officials say privately that the board voted for the annex not to placate Molina, but as a signal to the Sacramento coalition that they still want to reach some sort of compromise over the construction funds.

Some county officials were particularly distressed over Molina’s threats after Tuesday’s vote to go to Washington and tell the White House that the county doesn’t deserve any more federal health-care money until it agrees to build the larger hospital.

“I will go to the president and to the vice president and say that . . . if [the supervisors] don’t want to meet the needs of the community, they don’t need support from federal government,” Molina told reporters moments after the vote. “They don’t need support from the state Legislature and, unfortunately, it’s all taxpayers who will pay the price to meet the needs of these indigent beds.”

Assemblyman Gilbert Cedillo, (D-Los Angeles), defends Molina’s hard-line tactics, saying the board never would have considered the 150-bed annex had it not been for Molina “hanging in there” in the face of her colleagues’ unanimous opposition.

“In some respects she was out there on her own, but she is absolutely right . . . there is noreason why we are not building a 750-bed hospital,” said Cedillo, a former labor leader who represents an East Los Angeles district adjacent to the hospital complex.

Molina’s less-than-cordial relationship with other board members is nothing new, notes Cedillo, who until recently headed the county’s largest employee labor union. Indeed, it was Molina’s political isolation, Cedillo says, that gave her colleagues “the audacity to try and move a 500-bed hospital into her district.”

However, Cedillo says, since “they didn’t do that . . . I don’t see how Gloria is a loser.”

If anything, according to Cedillo, Molina’s steadfastness has solidified her support among other members of the Eastside coalition, including Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa. Molina appointed Villaraigosa, then a labor leader, to his first political position. But recently they have been at odds.

Villaraigosa has no comment on that or on comments from other coalition members--all of whom asked not to be identified--that Molina is so volatile and antagonistic that they have tried to keep her out of some sensitive settlement discussions with county officials over how to resolve the hospital controversy.

“I can’t speak to her relations on the board [of supervisors],” says Villaraigosa. “I can tell you this: We are clearly working together. My relationship with her has been very positive with respect to this issue.”

Scoring Points With Constituents

Last week’s political battle also scored Molina points with her constituents, say political observers.

“She may not be popular on the board,” says Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, “but the community loves her for that. They think she is an authentic leader.

“She was doing what she does best, saying this is what I believe in and this is something I will do without compromise.”

Guerra, however, said that Molina’s “strained” relationship with her colleagues “is a problem on such a small and powerful board. Will there be lasting consequences? Yes, because they are people.”

Such ruminations are a marked contrast to the time when Molina was widely considered to be the Latino community’s brightest political hope, perhaps to be its first mayor of Los Angeles since the days of the pueblo.

Some analysts recall that during the county’s flirtation with bankruptcy, Molina also alienated former Assembly colleagues by traveling to Sacramento and berating them for not doing enough to help bail out the supervisors financially.

“I believe she has isolated herself into a situation where she will never be able to go higher” in public office, says Rick Taylor, a veteran political consultant who once worked for Molina and helped her win an Assembly seat in 1982.

Molina “has so alienated her colleagues that she has become an ineffective member of the board,” Taylor says.

“Does that help the people she represents?” he asks. “I’ll bet they would have rather her find a workable solution to the issue than to make headlines that evening.”