Council Rookie Is an Unabashed L.A. Fan

In office just 10 months, Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge has quickly established himself as a sort of Paul Bunyan of the bureaucracy.

Heard about the time ol’ Tom LaBonge came upon a family from Washington state lost in a Griffith Park canyon? He led them out to safety--and Universal Studios--and left them with a book about L.A. that he keeps in his trunk.

Hey, has LaBonge ever called you from the road? You know what that ding-ding-ding sound is? He’s stopped the car, opened the door and--get this--he’s picking up trash.

And what about the time LaBonge stopped by a seniors center and launched into Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling in Love”?

It seems everyone at City Hall has a story about Tom LaBonge, and they’re not all tall tales. LaBonge, who used to drive dates across the 6th Street bridge to gaze at L.A.’s industrial yards, will go to any length to promote his hometown and its history. In council meetings, he scans the audience for international tourists so he can welcome them to “the great city of Los Angeles” and its “beautiful City Hall.” If they happen to be from one of L.A.’s sister cities, you can bet LaBonge will grab them for a photo. He hands out so many commendations that the city’s calligraphers have to stay late to keep up.

Despite 27 years as a city employee, LaBonge still marvels at the most mundane functions of Los Angeles. Last week, he made two trips to a garbage dump, just to show it off.

LaBonge’s cheerleading often starts eyes rolling around the City Council’s horseshoe desk. He is not an ideologue or a grand thinker. But if you need that pesky pothole patched, call (213) 485-3337. And don’t be surprised if LaBonge himself answers the phone.

“He was absolutely made to be a councilman in the city of Los Angeles,” said LaBonge’s chief of field operations, Rory Fitzpatrick, who grew up across the street from the councilman in a Silver Lake neighborhood that is part of LaBonge’s 4th District. The district ranges into Los Feliz, parts of Hollywood, North Hollywood and other communities.

Before his election last October, LaBonge had done fieldwork for Mayor Tom Bradley, Council President John Ferraro and Mayor Richard Riordan. After Ferraro died last year, LaBonge won the special election for Ferraro’s council seat.

Through his career, he has avoided wonkish policy debates in favor of street-level service--a mind-set that has become popular once again as City Hall tries to quell secessionist sentiment in Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. If Los Angeles breaks apart, “the sun would rise and all the other things would happen,” LaBonge said, “but it would personally hurt me.”

Tall and softer than in his days of playing football, with his silvery hair combed back, LaBonge can abruptly turn council discussions of ordinances and dry city business to his favorite topics. Standing, one hand in his pocket, he’ll laud L.A.’s parks, the 1984 Olympics and the Fire Department.

He’s not the only council member who grew up in Los Angeles, but he is the only one who repeatedly mentions his high school (John Marshall). Anyone who meets LaBonge gets two questions: Where do you live, and where’d you go to high school?

“It’s all about the neighborhood.... Los Angeles to you could be Toluca Lake, it could be San Pedro, it could be Sherman Oaks, it could be Venice,” he said.

Conversations with LaBonge bounce around the city. In a 15-minute interview, he managed to bring up Foster’s Freeze in Boyle Heights, his Irish Catholic grandfather who was a police officer, and how his grandparents on the German side lived downtown where City Hall stands now.

He remembered buying ice cream in Larchmont Village for a group of nuns and how he never goes anywhere without a loaf of their pumpkin bread. Somehow that anecdote recalled an encounter with Hugh Hefner over Pink’s chili dogs in Hollywood, the 44 pobladores who settled Los Angeles in 1781 and how the L.A. River determined the city’s siting.

As he does in council meetings, LaBonge praised “the great William Mulholland” and how the engineer brought water to the city from the Sierra. He talked about his own photography exhibits, local TV legend Stan Chambers and City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, a “great graduate” of rival Franklin High School in Highland Park.

LaBonge said his 4-year-old son, Charles, knows that if the firetrucks are speeding down Silver Lake Boulevard from the north, they’re from Station 56. From the south, they’re from Station 35.

LaBonge’s daughter, Mary-Catherine, is “a great public speaker,” he said. And she’s 8.

Called to jury duty last week, LaBonge couldn’t resist stopping by the council’s chambers to greet audience members there. He asked them to be patient while they waited for enough council members to arrive to start the meeting, and suggested that they pass the time by staring at the room’s “beautiful ceiling.”

When he got to the Hollywood courthouse, LaBonge said, he felt the need to point out to the judge and jurors that Hollywood Boulevard had just been spiffed up by one of the city’s “outstanding” street crews. He knew it was Crew No. 152.

“I sat right next to a constituent,” LaBonge said. “Got to get her street repaved.”