Religious, Civic Leaders Back New Charter

Countering organized labor groups now working to defeat a proposed reform of Los Angeles’ City Charter, a collection of religious and civic leaders on Friday announced their support for the document and gathered to plot strategy for winning its passage in the June 8 election.

The meeting in South-Central Los Angeles brought together pastors and rabbis from leading churches, synagogues and civic organizations. Among the organizations represented were Second Baptist Church, West Angeles Church of God in Christ, the NAACP, the Urban League, the League of Women Voters, the Miracle Center Apostolic Church, Kol Tikvah and the African American-Jewish Leadership Connection.

Pastors and rabbis who attended said they would urge their congregants to support the new charter, which they said would strengthen oversight of the Los Angeles Police Department and make the city a more livable and progressive place in the coming century.

“The charter we have was written in 1924,” said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League. “It was put together for the white majority population. It wasn’t put together for people like me.”

The gathering Friday was potentially important for three reasons:

* It takes the charter debate directly to traditionally liberal voters, who may not be inclined to follow the lead of Mayor Richard Riordan, the reformed document’s most visible proponent.

* It offers a way to raise interest in the charter in an area where the June turnout is expected to be somewhat higher than in Los Angeles generally, since a pair of hotly contested runoff elections--for Nate Holden’s council seat and Barbara Boudreaux’s spot on the school board--may help attract voters.

* And, most poignantly, the coalition represented at Friday’s meeting brings together the same constituencies, African American and liberal Jewish voters, who combined to elect Tom Bradley five times, thereby reshaping the political history of Los Angeles.

Friday’s meeting also highlights the latest of several unusual splits in the city’s body politic over the issue of charter reform. For one thing, it allies African American ministers with a Republican mayor in opposition to the more traditionally liberal City Council and unions.

Council members and the labor organizations, some of which negotiate their contracts with the council, have said they oppose the recommended reforms because they believe the proposed charter would create more bureaucracy, waste taxpayer money and give too much power to the mayor, among other things. Supporters counter by contending that the new civic constitution would actually streamline government, improving representation by creating regional planning commissions and neighborhood councils and saving taxpayers money in the long run by requiring regular performance audits. They also argue that the shift in mayoral authority is modest, but needed to make government more efficient and officials more accountable.

Because the charter reaches into every aspect of Los Angeles government, supporters and opponents tend to structure their appeals based in part on their audiences.

On Friday, that was evident, as charter supporters de-emphasized the aspects of the document that would strengthen the authority of the mayor--giving that person somewhat more authority to fire general managers and shape the city budget, among other things--and instead paid special attention to a set of provisions that would clarify the role of the Police Commission’s inspector general, the person charged with monitoring LAPD discipline and use of force.

That topic was particularly on the minds of pastors and others Friday, as they expressed concerns about the LAPD’s most controversial shooting in recent years, last week’s fatal confrontation between two police officers and a homeless, mentally ill woman on La Brea Avenue.

“Right now, [Police Chief] Bernard Parks is there, and that’s good,” Mack told the pastors. “But Bernard Parks has a contract and a term. It could be [former Chief] Daryl Gates sitting there.”

That possibility, Mack said, is why the city needs a strong inspector general who can review LAPD actions and report to the public.

Erwin Chemerinsky, who heads the elected charter reform commission, said the new charter delivers just that. Speaking Friday, he noted that former Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher, whose landmark review of the LAPD dramatically reshaped the department’s organization and policies, endorses the charter because it would give the inspector general latitude to conduct investigations and report findings.

The sections that detail the duties of the inspector general enjoy wide support, even among opponents of the overall charter. In fact, Councilwomen Jackie Goldberg and Ruth Galanter, two leaders of the effort to defeat the charter, have said that if voters reject the proposal, they intend to re-offer those sections as a charter amendment.

“Everybody likes the inspector general” recommendations, Goldberg said. “But you don’t have to take the bad to get the good.”