Richard Riordan

Even his toughest critics concede that Mayor Richard Riordan has been surprisingly effective in his six years as chief executive of Los Angeles. A wealthy but relatively unknown lawyer and investor, he won over the majority of the electorate in 1993, spending some $6 million of his personal fortune and running on a platform that stressed economic revitalization, safety and accountability. He took charge of a city in shambles, torn apart by civil unrest, racially polarized and engulfed by a recession that had taken the sparkle out of the Southern California dream.

Early in his first term, the city was shaken by the Northridge earthquake and seemed to hit rock bottom. Angelenos fled to Oregon and Colorado: Any place seemed better than L.A. But Riordan pressed ahead, pushing initiatives designed to improve the quality of life and make the city more business-friendly. Despite a lack of oration skills and an often tense relationship with the City Council, he has managed to make good on many of his core campaign promises, cleaning out and beefing up the police force, streamlining city permitting procedures, improving neighborhoods and creating jobs.

Of course, many improvements, from the dropping crime rate to the bustling economy, are rooted more in the nation than the city. Still, when Riordan presented his budget last April, he was able to include substantial spending increases for police and fire, libraries and parks--without raising taxes.

Riordan easily won reelection two years ago, and with the arrival of better economic times, focused on reforming the city’s charter and revamping the L.A. Unified School District. Among his proposals for charter reform were the establishment of neighborhood councils, a revamping of the way the city awards contracts and a variety of new powers for the mayor, including the right to fire city department heads. Meanwhile, he blasted the school board for ineptitude and sponsored a group of reform candidates. In June, voters approved his charter-reform measure and elected his slate of school-board candidates.

Almost since taking office, this GOP mayor has maintained a close relationship with the Clinton White House. He coaxed some $200 million out of the federal government for the Los Angeles Police Department, and has secured billions for everything from earthquake recovery to community redevelopment. Riordan was also instrumental in helping the city capture next year’s Democratic Party convention.

Still, everything’s not tea and roses. The L.A. school district remains in serious trouble, and the Metropolitan Transit Authority has wasted millions of dollars on dubious subway and fixed-rail lines. The mayor is now caught in the cross fire of a high-stakes, high-tech debate over whether the city’s cable franchises should be forced to grant free access to Internet service providers. Perhaps most disturbing, a majority of San Fernando Valley residents want to break away from Los Angeles and form a city of their own.

Riordan married Nancy Daly last year on Valentine’s Day; it was his third marriage. He has three adult children. Riordan promised during his initial campaign that he would serve only two terms, but with less than two years left, the 69-year-old mayor is not acting like a lame duck. In a conversation Thursday, he talked about his achievements, his hopes for the future of Los Angeles and a variety of gnarly problems facing the city in the years ahead.

Question: You went up against powerful interests and won the people’s approval for your charter-reform initiative. How much personal satisfaction did you take in that victory?

A: I’m not a person that believes in legacies, because I think that implies my main motivation is doing something that will make me look good. I am morally very happy that the people of Los Angeles favor charter reform. However, the proof in the pudding will be in the implementation of charter reform. We will have to be very intelligent and very vigilant in the implementation process over the next year.

Charter reform is very important to the future of this city. It will move most of the contracting out of the political realm. It will give the mayor authority over most of the city departments so that he can hold them accountable. Another very important addition to city government are the neighborhood councils. This will give people who may feel they’ve had no voice in government a chance to be heard, on a structured, continuing basis.

Q: How difficult will it be to get the City Council, which opposed charter reform, to support ordinances enabling it?

A: The City Attorney’s office is in the process of preparing the ordinances that will implement the new charter. I have great confidence they’ll do a good job, and I believe the council will ultimately vote to do the will of the people. It’s important to note that the main pieces of charter reform are self-executing and do not require council approval. For example, changing the council’s authority over the awarding of contracts and giving the Steve Proffitt, a contributing editor to Opinion, is director of the JSM+ New Media Lab.

mayor authority to remove heads of departments--these don’t require any council approval.

Q: By any measure, there have been dramatic improvements in the economic climate during your years as mayor. How would you characterize your success on what was one of your main campaign platforms: to reinvigorate the economy and create new jobs?

A: I set four major goals when I first became mayor. First was the creation of a safer city. Second, making city government friendly to job-creating businesses. Third, improving the quality of life in neighborhoods, particularly poor neighborhoods. And fourth, having a more efficient government. I’ve added education reform to that list, because I believe that it, along with safety, are the most important elements for the success of Los Angeles in the future.

Violent crime in the city is down over 60%. We’ve added about 30% more police officers, and, more importantly, we now have over 60% more police officers actually patrolling the streets. Government has become much more friendly to businesses, with permitting now taking as little as a fifth of the time it took before I was there. The quality of life in neighborhoods has improved significantly, largely as a result of urging neighborhoods to organize and take responsibility for their own quality of life. Government is much more efficient: We are delivering more services today, with fewer employees, than at any time in the history of city government. A result of all this is that businesses have come into the city and expanded in the city over the past six years.

Among the major accomplishments that have helped create a healthier local economy are the construction of the Alameda Corridor and the improvement of the Figueroa Corridor, the new cathedral, Staples Center, Disney Hall, the Hollywood renaissance and the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

Q: As you know, there’s a good deal of evidence that the majority of the jobs created here over the past few years are in low-paying occupations. What will it take to create higher-paying jobs, more in line with those of some years ago, when aerospace was booming?

A: I could write a book on this. I still don’t know all the answers, but I have read a lot about this and thought about it for years. Since the early ‘70s, the gap between rich and poor has increased radically. The median income in our country has not increased, in terms of purchasing power, at all. Meanwhile, the top 1% has increased by perhaps as much as 500 times. But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. This trend is the result of many different factors. Some of these factors are the downsizing of big corporations through the use of technology, the movement of high-paying manufacturing jobs to foreign countries and the downward spiral of our public education system.

Education is a huge problem. There are now estimated to be well over 100,000 high-tech jobs open in Los Angeles County that cannot be filled by local young people. An 18-year-old who can read and write and is proficient on a computer can get a $15,000-per-year job in Los Angeles right out of high school. So if there is any one solution to this problem, it’s educating children. That’s the key to being able to create and keep high-tech jobs for the present and the future.

Q: You were active, and successful, in getting reform candidates elected to the school board. But the mayor has no direct authority over the school district. Should that change and what should the mayor’s role be when it comes to education?

A: A quality education is the most important thing we can give to young Angelenos. I would be highly negligent as mayor if I did not take an interest in the education of our children. When you realize a poor 6-year-old child in Los Angeles has only a 12% chance of growing up to read and write at the 8th-grade level, you know we’re in trouble. The schools put the bureaucrats and politicians first and never ask themselves what’s in the best interests of children. Fortunately, the newly constituted school board is changing all that.

However, a totally bankrupt bureaucracy cannot be turned around in a day. It will take strong, tough and focused leadership, up and down the line, to turn the school district around. For example, we should forget terms like “bilingual” and “whole language” and implement structured English programs into the schools. We should hold schools accountable by requiring that every child, by the end of kindergarten, can read and write English. This is a stepping stone that will help the child grow year by year. The term “social promotion” should be taken out of the vocabulary . . . .

The structure of the Los Angeles school board--seven members, each elected from a different district--makes it almost impossible to hold any one member accountable for the miserable state of our schools. In other cities, such as Chicago, Boston and Cleveland, the state legislatures have made the mayor accountable for the success of the school district. The mayor is the most visible elected official in the city. So far, Sacramento has been unwilling to give this authority, and therefore this accountability, to the mayors in California.

Q: How else might we reform the school system and get voters involved?

A: The election-by-district format for the school board has resulted in the election of too many wannabe politicians. Many of them see this as a stepping stone to higher office. For example, Rita Walters and Jackie Goldberg were previously on the school board and are now City Council members. For years the school-board members were elected at large, by all the voters of the city. The result is that many of the top minds in Los Angeles were on the school board. Some were very liberal, some very conservative, but they were people who put the interest of the children first.

The last school-board election showed that if the public gets involved, they can make a difference. Also, there are numerous corporations and residents who want to help individual schools. We need a management structure at the school system that invites this kind of help, instead of setting up a stone wall that keeps people away. One piece of advice I have for corporations is not to just give money, but to get involved with the school to make it better.

Q: This city, like many others, is involved in a debate over how the future of high-speed Internet access will evolve. So far, you’ve sided with what is essentially the status quo, supporting cable operators’ position that they should not have to offer access to third-party providers, such as America Online. Can you explain your thinking on this so-called “open access” debate?

A: I have an open mind on this issue. I’m learning more about it every day, but I’m still inclined to be against open access, or as others call it, forced access. This is not a fight between advocates for the rich and the poor; it’s a fight between multibillion-dollar corporations. The main reason to be against open access is that cable companies will not put the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to connect homes and businesses to broad-band Internet service without assurance that they can earn a return on that investment. For example, in Canada, where they have open access, the cable companies have not been making these investments. Los Angeles should copy San Francisco and put this decision off for a few years, until we can better understand what is happening. But, at the same time, we should require that cable companies offer free access to schools and government departments.

Q: Perhaps the most difficult issue facing the city is the secession movement. Polls indicate broad support among San Fernando Valley residents for breaking away, and there are also movements in San Pedro and Wilmington. What do you say to convince them it is better to stay a part of Los Angeles?

A: Secession would be a disaster, not just for the city of Los Angeles, but for the new cities created by secession. The Valley would have to create entire new systems and bureaucracies: new police and fire units, health and building departments and the like. They would have to come up with their own water and power division, and they would lose the revenue generated by the airport, which is very important to the city. More importantly, they would be abandoning the less fortunate citizens in some of the poorer neighborhoods of our city. I ask anyone who is favoring secession to have some patience and work with us to continue the kind of dynamic recovery we’ve been experiencing in this city, and to help up make Los Angeles a better place to live for all who live here.

Q: It appears the NFL will end up awarding a football franchise to Los Angeles and the Coliseum will be renovated. How important is that to the revitalization of downtown, and what is the city’s role in making it happen?

A: An NFL team will help the economy by drawing more business into our city, and it will revitalize the community in South Los Angeles and bring many new jobs to the area. It’s a big plus. I’m against using any taxpayer money from the general fund of the city. However, any incremental taxes generated directly as a result of the team being in Los Angeles, such as sales or property taxes, could be used to help make this plan happen.

Q: Finally, you must think about your life when you are the former mayor of Los Angeles. Do you see yourself continuing to be actively involved in the life of the city?

A: I’m going to spend 100% of my time on education reform, locally. People have suggested I might go to Washington, some even suggest I could be secretary of education. But I find if you really want to turn things around, particularly for poor children, you’ve got to do it locally.

Let me also say this. I believe God holds every human being to be just as important as I am. I’ve followed that philosophy as mayor, treating everyone with respect. I also believe that, as a leader, I have to improve the lives of the economically disadvantaged in this city. That means better education for their children, safer streets, better neighborhoods, better parks and libraries. Until the day I leave office, I’m going to work to make those things happen.*

“The quality of life in neighborhoods has improved significantly, largely as a result of urging neighborhoods to. . .take responsibility for their own quality of life.

“Secession would be a disaster. . .They would be abandoning the less fortunate citizens in some of the poorer neighborhoods of our city.”

“The structure of the Los Angeles school board. . .makes it almost impossible to hold any one member accountable for the miserable state of our schools.”