Both Charter Panels Adopt Compromise

Two closely watched, heavily lobbied, sometimes praised and sometimes ridiculed citizen commissions all but completed their jobs Monday, putting the finishing touches on a compromise package of City Charter reforms and propelling the city government overhaul toward the June ballot.

“Today is a historic day, a crowning day in two years’ worth of work,” appointed charter commission Chairman George Kieffer said before his panel overwhelmingly adopted the so-called unified charter.

Only one appointed commissioner, former City Councilman Robert Wilkinson, voted against the final package. Wilkinson called it a “giveaway” of power to the mayor’s office. He said he would urge Los Angeles City Council members to scale back some of the proposal’s recommendations.

But Wilkinson, who often is a dissenting and curmudgeonly voice on that panel, was conspicuously alone Monday. Other appointed commissioners voted to adopt a dozen or so small modifications of the draft charter and, having done that, endorsed the entire deal by a 15-1 vote.

As is almost always the case, however, the commissions’ actions fell short of resolving all remaining issues. In particular, members of the city’s elected commission expressed frustration with the charter draft, saying it ignored or misstated their recommendations in a variety of areas.

As a result, the elected panel, while voting to support the compromise package in principle, also pledged to continue to work out areas of difference, including a controversial question of when the charter should take effect. One proposal would delay implementation until 2001, which supporters say is necessary to implement the complicated proposal but which has drawn fire from Mayor Richard Riordan, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and others.

Among other things, the draft charter, if adopted by voters, would strengthen the mayor’s office by giving the city’s next chief executive closer control over citizen commissions, a more direct role in managing city litigation and greater authority to run the city in emergencies. It also would create a system of self-selected neighborhood councils and local planning commissions intended to improve representation. The City Council would be redefined as a more traditional legislative body, and a host of city agencies and officials would see their jobs retooled.

In the last few weeks, the two commissions have moved from drafting their own charters to striving for a common document, on the theory that voters would respond more favorably to a single proposal than to two competing visions of Los Angeles’ future.

The meetings Monday represented a significant stepin that compromise effort. Unlike a few weeks ago, however, when the appointed panel burst into applause and cheers at the commission’s approval in principle of the document, Monday’s vote was taken by a more subdued group. There was no applause and little reaction to the vote.

The elected commission was even more reserved. There, commissioners griped about drafting errors and worried that, with time running out, they needed their own staff to play a more direct role in writing the next draft.

Elected Commission Chairman Erwin Chemerinsky defended the other commission’s staff while conceding that the draft did include some errors.

“Many mistakes were made,” he said. “I recognize that I made many mistakes.”

The most contentious proposal, to defer implementing the charter until July 1, 2001--one day after Riordan leaves office--was adopted by the appointed commission Monday over the objections of Riordan and his staff. Supporters of the 2001 date argue that it would take two years to adopt the ordinances and other measures needed to put the charter into effect.

Critics retort that the date seemed deliberately chosen to slight Riordan, who was the major force behind charter reform in the first place.

Although the appointed and elected commissions have made hundreds of decisions regarding the charter and what it should include, one continues to elude them: the appropriate size of the Los Angeles City Council.

Solid majorities of both commissions agreed that the council should be expanded, though the elected commission majority generally favored increasing its size from 15 to 25 members while the appointed panel preferred only 21 members. Even among those who favored expansion, however, there was a lingering fear that voters would see that as growth in government and would reject the entire package simply to avoid adding new council members.

In the end, the two commissions agreed on a three-way option. The main charter will call for preserving the status quo, 15 members. But voters would be allowed to approve expansion to 21 or 25 members. If the charter passes and neither of the amendments is approved, the council would stay at 15; if both amendments are approved, the one with the most votes would take effect.

“What we’re doing here . . . is sound policy,” said appointed Commissioner Ed Edelman. “I think it makes eminent political sense.”

By contrast, elected Commissioner Rob Glushon warned that failing to include a council increase in the main charter was a sure way of dooming expansion. “Mark my words,” he said. “This will not pass.”

He voted for it anyway.

The appointed commission’s draft moves now to the City Council, which has the power to reject it, amend it or put it on the ballot as written. Constraining the council, however, is the elected commission, which can put its recommendations directly on the ballot. So if the council makes wholesale changes, it risks running its version against the elected commission’s.