Riordan Issues Challenge to His Successor

In his final State of the City address, Mayor Richard Riordan on Thursday challenged his would-be successors to adopt his political agenda and make school reform and public safety the top priorities at City Hall.

With mayoral candidates James K. Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa lobbying hard for his endorsement, Riordan used the high-profile forum as much to pressure his suitors as to boast of his own accomplishments.

Riordan urged them to keep his best agency managers in place. He asked them to carry forward with the library expansions, park upgrades and other neighborhood improvements made possible by the booming economy of the 1990s. And he called on them to resist the impulse to reward campaign supporters at public expense.

“The man we elect on June 5 must understand that his task is not only to govern, but to lead,” Riordan told several hundred supporters at the El Portal Center for the Arts in North Hollywood.

“He must be bold enough to stand up to groups that have only their own interest at heart, even if they helped get him elected. And he must be fearless enough to defend the common good by building a coalition of communities, not a collection of special interest groups.”

Although Riordan devoted much of the speech to his hopes for the future, he used the rest to define his legacy. Looking back on his eight years as mayor, he took credit for turning around a city torn by riots and recession.

In 1993, he said, Los Angeles “was no longer the city of angels.”

“Crime was up, confidence was down, and race relations were at an all-time low,” he said. “Schools and libraries were in trouble, personal income was decreasing, and neighborhoods were falling apart. I stand here today . . . and I am proud to say that the angels have, indeed, come back to our city.”

With safer streets, better schools and thousands of new jobs, he said, “we are better off than we were eight years ago.”

Riordan made the most of the setting at the El Portal, an ornate vaudeville-era theater decorated with gold, purple and white balloons. His warm-up act was a jazz trio from the Hamilton High School Academy of Music. The stage was set like a mayor’s office, with bookshelves as his backdrop.

Just before his speech, Riordan aides screened a video tribute to the mayor. It depicted pre-Riordan Los Angeles with black-and-white images of riots in the streets, with eerie music in the background. By contrast, a bright trumpet fanfare accompanied the color images of Los Angeles landmarks built or begun during Riordan’s time at City Hall: the Staples Center sports arena and the Roman Catholic cathedral and Disney Concert Hall under construction downtown.

In his speech, Riordan used the El Portal as a symbol for his leadership. It sustained severe damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake but was rebuilt.

“This beautiful El Portal theater has risen like a Phoenix from the ashes . . . to become the cultural mecca of this neighborhood,” he said. “And this has happened over and over, around our city. We showed the world how we could come back from this incredibly big natural disaster.”

No Reference to Secession

Notably missing from Riordan’s speech was any reference to the threat of San Fernando Valley secession from Los Angeles--despite the venue in North Hollywood. It was on Riordan’s watch that the separatist movement became a viable force with genuine potential to break the city apart. Riordan has used increasingly harsh language to denounce secession as an immoral abandonment of poor neighborhoods on the south side of the Hollywood Hills, but he ignored it in his speech.

He did, however, mention another stain on his legacy: the Rampart police corruption scandal.

“Our new mayor must continue to reform the LAPD and put the dark chapter of the Rampart scandal behind us once and for all,” he said. “But the new mayor must also work to keep our neighborhoods safe. . . . He must focus on recruitment, morale and community policing--always keeping in mind that the single most important goal of the LAPD is to keep our city safe.”

Overall, Riordan’s delivery was low key. But his voice rose with emotion when he reached his signature issue, education. The mayor has no direct power over the school system, but “children of our city have been denied a quality education for too many years,” he said.

“As mayor, I felt I had a duty to get involved, and when I spoke out, I was told it was none of my business. But it was my business. The children of Los Angeles are my constituents, and I felt--as all of you do--that we cannot fail our children for one second longer.”

He called on the next mayor to promote school construction to relieve overcrowding, expand after-school programs and follow his example of putting up school board candidates.

Turning to the parks system, Riordan introduced the crowd to Helen Johnson, a community leader who complained to him last year that her neighborhood park had been neglected for decades. Riordan promised to have it fixed up in two weeks--and it was. He also promised to renovate 37 more parks before he leaves office, and called on the next mayor to have one upgraded every two weeks.

He glanced at Hahn, who was seated in the front row, just steps from the mayor’s podium. “Jimmy’s looking at me,” Riordan joked. “Is Antonio here?”

Villaraigosa was campaigning in South Los Angeles. But Hahn flashed the mayor a thumbs-up for the parks challenge, and the mayor did likewise.

“Great speech,” Hahn declared as he left the theater.

Hahn said he accepted the mayor’s challenges on police, education and neighborhood improvements, but was noncommittal on keeping Riordan’s agency management team.

“The mayor’s brought in a lot of good general managers, but nobody should expect that anybody’s got a job for life,” Hahn said.

Villaraigosa said he agreed with the goals laid out by Riordan. He said he called Riordan after the speech and told him he “accepted the challenge of continuing to build on his accomplishments.” He also appeared more willing than Hahn to keep some of Riordan’s staff.

“I believe that the best way to improve the business environment in this city is to keep many of those managers that have provided the city with more efficient and streamlined City Hall,” he said.

No Endorsement Yet for a Candidate

Riordan offered no clue to which candidate he would support. Earlier this week, he said he could announce his decision Monday. Both candidates are Democrats. For either one of them, an endorsement by the Republican mayor would be a big boost to their efforts to appeal to centrist voters.

Riordan’s speech was warmly received by the supporters who filled the theater. They interrupted him with applause more than 20 times. But only two of the City Council’s 13 members showed up: Mike Hernandez and Alex Padilla. It was the smallest turnout of council members for any Riordan State of the City speech. Hernandez said the 11 no-shows reflected Riordan’s tense relations with the council.

Other council members said they were too busy to trek to North Hollywood.

“I had some really important meetings that I couldn’t reschedule,” said Councilman Nick Pacheco, normally a Riordan supporter.

Even Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents North Hollywood, skipped the speech.

His chief of staff, Greg Nelson, said, “Who really enjoys going out there and listening to a speech that you can just read a copy of? It’s not like the inaugural of the president and everyone shows up.”