POLITICAL BRIEFING : Reform Panelists Charter Courses for City Council

Six former members of the city’s elected Charter Reform Commission, including three from the San Fernando Valley, are thinking about running for the Los Angeles City Council.

Just months after voters approved the new charter, commissioner Dennis Zine of West Hills said he is seriously exploring a run for the 3rd Council District seat, representing the southwest Valley, in 2001, when incumbent Laura Chick is forced out of office by term limits.

“Political pundits have told me I’d be a viable candidate,” said Zine, a police union director.

Paula Boland of Granada Hills, who also has served in the state Assembly, said this week she is seriously considering a run for the 12th Council District seat representing the northwest Valley when Hal Bernson is forced by term limits to step down in 2003.

Although she is a supporter of a study on breaking up Los Angeles, Boland sees nothing inconsistent about thinking of running for City Council.

“Talking about getting our fair share, what better place to do something about that, until we get a detachment, than there,” she said of the City Council.

Former elected Charter Reform Commissioner Rob Glushon of Encino said he has also thought of running for City Council, but would not do anything about it until close friend Cindy Miscikowski is termed out of the 11th District seat.

Outside the Valley, former elected charter commissioners Woody Fleming, Janice Hahn and Bennett Kayser are all exploring council candidacies for 2001.

Fleming is looking at the 9th District seat, Hahn is talking to people about the 15th District, and Kayser said he is planning to run for the 13th District seat, currently held by Jackie Goldberg.

Zine, who placed third out of six candidates for the 3rd District council seat six years ago, said service on the charter panel during the last two years was good preparation for being a council member, so it should be no surprise that so many panel members are thinking of running.

“It showed me how the city operates,” he said.

Zine and others are likely to face strong competition for any vacant council seat.

In the 3rd District, another possible candidate mentioned by district activists is Ken Bernstein, a former top aide to Chick.

Steve Gray-Barkan, a political consultant not involved with any of the former charter commissioners, said they will have an advantage.

“It is a good platform to run on,” Gray-Barkan said. “And they will benefit from relationships they established with voters while in office.”

“POWER” BROKERS: If City Hall antics seem positively juvenile at times, it was pure kid’s stuff Wednesday.

But you can forget your usual cast of power brokers in suits. These dudes were the Power Rangers.

Video crews spent the day in a City Hall courtyard taping a segment of the popular Fox Kids television show “Power Rangers Lost Galaxy.”

The superhero rangers, garbed in bright eye-popping spandex and robot-like helmets, fought off evil opponents outfitted in orange tights and red and blue shorts.

The Power Rangers, you may recall, are your average garden-variety kids, but as soon as trouble brews (“or they have to save the world,” explains a show official) they shout “Go galactic!” and morph into those kung-fu fightin’ robo-heroes.

If only there was a code word to morph our city fathers when needed.

ROGAN TRAVELS: Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), who represents the largest concentration of Armenians outside of Armenia, will spend his Labor Day weekend visiting the Republic of Armenia and meeting with various dignitaries--including the man serving as supreme patriarch of all Armenians.

Rogan is traveling to the former Soviet state, now a democracy with a fast-growing economy, as part of a delegation hosted by the Armenian Assembly of America. He is scheduled to meet with Armenian Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsian and Armenian President Robert Kocharian on Saturday, then spend Sunday morning meeting with Archbishop Nerses Pozapalian, the interim Catholicos, or leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and laying a wreath at the grave of the late Catholicos, His Holiness Karekin I, who died in July of cancer at age 66.

“More than any other in America, the culture of our community is closely woven with Armenia,” Rogan said.

Rogan, who is working to have the United States formally recognize the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turkish government from 1915 to 1923, will also spend Sunday visiting the Armenian Genocide Museum and laying a wreath at the Genocide Memorial with a group of 20 Armenian Boy Scouts.

Former President George Bush and numerous members of Congress shot down a similar resolution in 1990, citing the United States’ important military and economic alliance with Turkey. The Turkish government refuses to acknowledge a genocide occurred, contending both Turks and Armenians suffered heavy losses during fighting at the time.

BERNSON TAKES AIM: No one can accuse Bernson of neglecting his duties just because he is a lame-duck councilman.

That was clear recently when he took on an urgent issue: urinating in public.

Bernson asked the city attorney to find a way to plug a legal loophole that, he contends, makes it difficult for police to enforce bans against public urination.

“Disturbingly, the city is experiencing more and more instances of people urinating in public; on streets, on others’ private property and in our parks and other open spaces,” Bernson said in the motion.

Bernson said the issue is public health, not decency.

“At a time when we are celebrating our premier position as a world-class city, host to thousands of tourists and numerous conventions, we cannot permit this practice to proliferate,” Bernson said.

THRILL OF VICTORY: When City Councilman Joel Wachs of Studio City resigned as the council’s president pro tem in June to protest his colleagues’ opposition to the new charter, Wachs also gave up some powers.

One was over an appointment to the city Ethics Commission. Wachs’ appointee to the key panel, Art Mattox, made it clear he wanted to stay on when his term expired July 1.

But, it was not to be.

Fresh from her election to replace Wachs as the council’s president pro tem, City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter has replaced Mattox on the Ethics Commission with someone from her district.

She has nominated Pam Emerson, a Mar Vista resident and employee of the Coastal Commission, to fill the seat appointed by the president pro tem.

Galanter was not at all hesitant to use her new powers to make a new appointment, said spokeswoman Niki Tennant.

“She wants to use every power she has to make the city better,” Tennant said. “She felt it was time for new blood.”