The Hard Part Is Implementation

The voters have spoken. The new Los Angeles City Charter will take effect July 1, 2000. If one believed the campaign rhetoric, the city will become more efficient, services will be better delivered and everyone will be more accountable. Now that is reform. With the charter changed, what could go wrong?

The answer: plenty. To implement the new charter, nearly 75 years of rules, laws and regulations will have to be examined and revised to be consistent with the new city “constitution.” In addition, departments and major city functions will have to be reorganized. The drafters of the unified charter originally proposed two years to conduct this process, but elected leaders including the mayor, the city attorney and the city controller believed the job could be done in one year. The voters have now mandated this review to be completed within one year, and the new laws and ordinances revised accordingly.

But what happens if the review and revision are not completed? Who is held accountable if the work is not done? The simple answer is the elected officials of the city. But there is a special responsibility for the City Council, which must vote on the new laws, enact the reorganization changes and approve adequate budget authority for these initiatives to work. However, with term limits, most elected city officials will not go before the voters again, unless they run for a different office. And since the City Council was not involved with writing the new charter, it can’t really be expected to be the charter’s champion, even though council members have to implement it.

There are some relevant precedents from recent charter amendments that demonstrate that change can be accomplished even under the present circumstances.

One useful precedent is the ethics and campaign reform of the early 1990s, which outlawed outside compensation for elected city officers and changed the rules governing lobbyists and elections. Like the new charter, these reforms were done at the urging of a mayor and groups outside the normal City Hall insiders over the initial opposition of most of the City Council. These changes affected City Hall and officerholders personally, but nevertheless took effect and have been made to work.

Another useful example is the Christopher Commission reform of the Los Angeles Police Department, which was a combination of charter amendments and policy changes necessary to reorient the LAPD over the opposition of most of the recognized representatives of the Police Department. These reforms are still a work in progress, but the LAPD is moving in the overall direction set out by the Christopher Commission.

Both examples are largely success stories. What distinguished both of these controversial examples was the presence of organized groups outside City Hall in support of the reforms and a vigilant press to report on controversies that inevitably developed over implementation.

There is another recent reform that has not gone as well. In 1995, with the support of the mayor and the council, voters overwhelmingly adopted changes to the charter on purchasing and contracting reform. Details that should not have been in the charter were removed, leaving it up to the council to amend the administrative code to implement changes. Those new rules were drafted and submitted to the council, where they still sit today--four years later. What was different about this reform? There was no constituency outside City Hall keeping a watch on what happened and demanding change.

This gets back to what we must do now that there is a new charter. How do advocates and supporters make sure it is implemented?

There are two steps that would help guarantee success, one inside City Hall and one outside.

First, the council president should appoint a special committee made up of council members who will commit themselves to the hard work of implementing the new charter and overseeing the complicated task of revising 75 years of laws and rules written with a different governance structure. This group should have a working counterpart of city officials appointed and directed by the mayor to ensure departmental cooperation. The city attorney, city controller, city administrative officer, the chief legislative analyst and others would have to work with both groups. Second, we must ask the leaders, and especially the chairs of the two charter reform commissions to form an ongoing monitoring group to periodically report back to the public on how the implementation process is proceeding. I doubt that the courageous and hard-working citizens who served in these jobs for the past two years would welcome this recommendation, but I know of no one else with the credibility and knowledge to provide the type of report card we need on progress in implementing reforms.