Supervisor Attacks Mayor Over Remarks on Needy

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich attacked Mayor Richard Riordan on Tuesday for making what he called reckless charges that county officials had neglected poor neighborhoods.

Antonovich said it was Riordan, a fellow Republican, who had ignored the needs of the poor.

“Mayor Riordan can serve his city better by bicycling in downtown Los Angeles--instead of the south of France--so he could see firsthand the horrible conditions,” Antonovich said.

“Los Angeles city needs to address the fact that they allow people to live on the curbs, their failure to have the streets cleaned. Some of the businesses down here have had to hire their own cleaning personnel. Mayor Riordan’s eight years of leadership could have been serving this county better, had he addressed those issues instead of turning a blind eye.”

Riordan told The Times last week that politicians generally neglect poor neighborhoods and work “to get friends of theirs contracts, jobs, and you see this with the poverty pimps.” He also said county contracts “go to friends of minority politicians in those areas.”

“They’re not putting the poor children first,” he said.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who is African American, said, “It sounds like someone who’s a racist, and I don’t think he is a racist.”

A Riordan spokesman said the mayor stood by his remarks.

“The mayor has a deep commitment to empowering the poor in our city and lifting them out of poverty,” said Deputy Mayor Ben Austin. “His comments were made from the heart.”