Enough Soap, Mr. Mayor

These days, City Hall East has all the petulance, intrigue and pettiness of an old “Dallas” episode and very little serious problem-solving. But far from being entertaining, the long-running downtown soap opera is an embarrassment to the city.

The latest drama involves a bitter feud between Mayor Richard Riordan and the city’s chief administrative officer, Bill Fujioka. Riordan appointed Fujioka last July but soured on him soon afterward. Under the current charter, Riordan needs the City Council’s support to fire the administrator. He tried but couldn’t get that support, in part because of the council’s deep reservoir of ill will toward Riordan.

So Riordan is stuck with Fujioka until the new charter takes effect on July 1, allowing the mayor to terminate department heads without council approval. In the interim, Riordan is doing his best to humiliate Fujioka, most recently by refusing to share with him documents pertaining to the mayor’s budget for the coming fiscal year. The current charter requires the CAO to assist the mayor in putting together the budget. To the extent Riordan withholds fiscal information, he makes it impossible for Fujioka to carry out his duties, possibly jeopardizing the integrity of the city’s budget.

Wednesday, after reports detailing Riordan’s efforts to stonewall Fujioka, one of the mayor’s emissaries allowed the CAO to peek at some numbers--but Fujioka still hasn’t gotten a formal copy of the entire budget summary.

Riordan is playing an irresponsible and dangerous game, one that threatens to undermine the new charter before it even takes effect. Just last month he publicly scolded Gil Garcetti and Bernard C. Parks for their failure to cooperate in investigating the Rampart scandal. “This isn’t a children’s game,” Riordan exploded. “The district attorney and police chief have been acting like children. They’ve got to start acting like adults and put the city first.”

Who’s behaving like a child now?