Hahn and State Officials to Meet

Working to amplify the city’s political clout in Sacramento at a time when governments up and down the state are worried about the faltering economy, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn meets this morning with the legislators who represent Los Angeles in the first of several planned gatherings.

Hahn invited the lawmakers so he could brief them on the city’s post-Sept. 11 security plan and discuss budget issues.

In addition to its substance, the meeting is significant because it represents a departure from recent practice.

Neither long-serving Mayor Tom Bradley nor his successor, Richard Riordan, typically invited the legislative delegation to join him in planning strategy. Riordan’s office was often faulted for its relations with legislators in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

The county Board of Supervisors already meets annually with members of the county delegation.

“It’s a positive step for the city, to bring together all our legislative leaders and have them working together for the city’s interests,” Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook said.

Hahn has long spoken of wanting to improve Los Angeles’ relations with Sacramento. The day after his election, he talked with Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) about increasing contacts with the delegation.

“I’m very excited that the mayor’s office is interested in this approach,” Hertzberg said, adding that the delegations from San Francisco and San Diego, both of which are far smaller than that of Los Angeles, are better coordinated. “It’s very important both at the county and the city level to be well-organized.”

Hahn invited all 26 of the area’s legislators to the meeting.

The meeting comes as Los Angeles’ and Sacramento’s fortunes are increasingly intertwined.

For years, the power brokers in the state Capitol lacked ties to Los Angeles. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, for instance, came from San Francisco, where he is now mayor.

Today, however, the speaker of the Assembly is Hertzberg, and the next one will be Herb Wesson (D-Culver City).

Gov. Gray Davis is a onetime Los Angeles-area legislator, and one of his Republican challengers in the governor’s race is Hahn’s predecessor, Riordan.

Relations between the mayor’s office and the governor come with some complications, however. Davis and Riordan backed Hahn’s opponent in the recent mayor’s race, Antonio Villaraigosa, and Hahn was conspicuously absent at a recent gathering of mayors announcing their support for Davis in his reelection campaign.

Still, Sacramento and Los Angeles are linked in ways that supersede the personalities of their elected leaders: Sacramento is the seat of the powerful state government, while Los Angeles is the state’s largest city and supplies the Legislature with many of its members.

That links the fortunes of the state and local governments in a number of areas. For instance, as the economy slumps, and the state scrambles to patch a possible $12.4-billion deficit, Los Angeles’ own budget is increasingly at risk. The city relies on state money for everything from filling potholes to keeping police on the street.

In addition, both governments are reeling from the security demands created by the events of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan. A major topic at the meeting will be the city’s terrorism security plans. Hahn wants “to give the legislative leaders a sense of all the measures the city has taken since Sept. 11”, Middlebrook said.

All that preparedness costs money--an estimated $7.2 million for the police and fire departments and $3.5 million for City Hall security--and officials have already submitted a wish list to Sacramento in hopes of being reimbursed for some of those costs.

Hertzberg said funding is tight. But he and Middlebrook noted that with 17 Assembly members and nine state senators, Los Angeles controls nearly one-fifth of the Legislature.