Voters Show Faith That Government Can Work

In a city where most people feel unconnected to government and where secession sentiment has been brewing, the voters presented a startling mandate to their leaders to reform the city’s governing institutions.

The mandate for reform was very broad, stunning even supporters of the new charter. The charter measure passed with 60% of the vote. In three City Council districts, it received more than 70% of the vote, including 71% in the 4th District, represented by Council President John Ferraro.

The conventional wisdom had been that the charter could win if the Westside and the San Fernando Valley--middle-class areas--had high turnouts. The charter did do very well in those areas, but turnout was not notably high. In fact, the highest turnout percentages came in two central city districts, the 10th and 14th, and in a Valley district with a large Latino population, the 7th. In each of those districts, there was a contested council race. And not only did the charter measure pass citywide, it passed by large margins in two of these three districts.

On the Eastside, with its growing Latino activism, the charter did very well, drawing 66% in the Hernandez’s 1st District, one of the city’s least affluent districts, and 58% in Richard Alatorre’s 14th. It received 65% in another less affluent district, the 13th, represented by Jackie Goldberg. Only in the 8th District in South-Central Los Angeles, represented by Mark Ridley-Thomas, did the charter fail badly.

While the voters’ mandate grows out of a critique of how government is working, it is also an act of faith based on the belief that government can work better.

Those who have given up rarely vote for reform. Nothing is more important to the future of this city than for its leaders to respond to this act of faith with a tireless commitment to make reform a reality. Beachheads can be lost, and once lost, are extremely difficult to regain.

The next stage is to implement the new charter so that its promise to the people can be attained: a more accountable, more accessible, more efficient and more responsive city government. The challenge is every bit as daunting as the forging of a unified charter between two charter reform commissions and its passage by the voters.

The new charter will take effect July 1, 2000, a little more than one year from today. The provisions involving neighborhood councils will take effect three weeks from today, on July 1. That is not a lot of time. It took the two commissions two full years to develop a unified charter and present it to the voters.

Under the new charter, the city must create an Office of Neighborhood Empowerment and hire a general manager to run it; develop a Neighborhood Empowerment Commission; and create an Office of Finance and at least five area planning commissions. The mayor must make appointments to the Neighborhood Empowerment Commission and the area planning commissions, and the City Council must confirm the appointees. The council will be required to develop ordinances for the detailed operations of these new entities and for other provisions of the new charter. The city attorney is to coordinate the implementation project.

If the implementation process is to succeed, it must be pursued with the same principles that drove the work of the reform commissions. One thing both reform commissions learned is that the people have their own criteria for judging the actions of government. To the public, it was obvious that government should be reformed. It was obvious that there should be a single charter. It was obvious that it didn’t matter one bit whether one leader or another “won” charter reform because charter reform was about the people, and not about the leaders.

There can be no winners or losers. Charter reform only succeeded because in the midst of a highly contentious political environment, everybody who supported the charter gave up as much as they gained. This is no time for gloating or for payback.

Let the process of implementation become a symbol of better government. Let the public see the process in action. Let the public see that elected officials can work together productively to make the government work well.

Behind the scenes, the charter reform commissions saw how the experienced and dedicated employees of the city worked to make the draft charter a well-designed document. Let the implementation process become a vehicle to provide the public with a glimpse of how government might work under a new charter. Determine that on July 1, 2000, the city will be ready and able to operate under the new charter, whatever it takes.