Riordan’s Appointment Holds Promise

Sacramento

For good political theater, you’ve got to like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointment of Richard Riordan as his education secretary.

It produces fun and excitement, by Sacramento standards, and there hasn’t been much of that around the governor’s office in recent years.

It’s also a bold move, in many respects. Riordan, 73, can be a loose cannon, a trait he himself seems to be on guard against.

When I told him during an interview that I understood he was speaking only for himself -- not Schwarzenegger -- the former L.A. mayor chuckled and said, “No, that’s not the way it works now.” His words, Riordan indicated, also reflect on his boss.

Says one Schwarzenegger advisor: “This is the guy we’re going to have to keep the closest eye on, obviously.”

But this is the kind of thing that message-control strategists -- and Gray Davis types -- fret a lot more about, I suspect, than Schwarzenegger does.

Anyway, unlike most gubernatorial appointees, Riordan has enough stature that his utterances may be associated more with himself than with the governor.

Regardless, if you look back at Riordan’s disastrous 2002 campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, much of what he said that conservatives denounced has since been quietly accepted as party dogma.

Riordan committed the sin of admonishing the California GOP to be more inclusive or become an “extinct species.” Inclusive included accepting Republicans who support abortion rights. Republicans like himself. Like Schwarzenegger.

Later, the party quit yelping about social issues, united behind a moderate and got him elected governor.

Schwarzenegger has to be admired for appointing Riordan -- a friend, neighbor and ally -- to a job he wanted without stewing over how this might look to the public, as a timid pol might have.

But Schwarzenegger did botch the announcement Monday, adding to the theater -- and reminding some of Davis.

The state’s biggest teachers union -- the California Teachers Assn. -- walked off Schwarzenegger’s showcase, 68-member “transition team” to protest Riordan’s selection.

Officially, John Hein, the CTA’s political operative, bolted the advisory committee because Schwarzenegger had ignored the union’s recommendation to abolish the position of education secretary. It’s a “redundant bureaucracy,” the CTA contends, because there’s already an elected superintendent of public instruction and a governor-appointed Board of Education.

There also was suspicion that the CTA picked up and left because it despised Riordan personally. He had tangled with the L.A. teachers union, running candidates who ousted school board members it backed.

But the biggest reason for telling the transition team “hasta la vista” was that, despite being a member, the teachers union was not given a heads up about Riordan. “To not even give us a courtesy call,” says one CTA official, “that’s like Gray Davis.”

This is a governor-elect, after all, who says he wants to “reach out.”

“We’re very good at working with people who want to work with us,” asserts Hein, “and their worst nightmare if they do something and don’t tell us.”

Davis learned that. Clearly, one of Riordan’s first phone calls should be to the CTA.

As for scuttling the education secretary’s office, this argument mostly is over semantics. Every governor needs an education advisor -- to recommend actions on bills, appointments to boards and overall policy, plus to peddle the administration’s agenda.

The real question is whether it should be “cabinet-level.” Republican Gov. Pete Wilson created the present office in 1991, largely because he couldn’t get along with the then-superintendent, Bill Honig.

Because of budget cuts, the office is down to 12 staffers -- although it’s funded for 20 -- with an appropriation of $1.7 million, headed toward $1.4 million.

The secretary has no real power -- only the power to persuade a governor if he’ll listen (Davis was distracted in recent years) and to shout from the bully pulpit. Riordan should excel at both.

Riordan’s top goal -- and apparently Schwarzenegger’s -- is to reduce state mandates and give school districts more local control.

“Every time somebody gets a harebrained scheme in the Legislature, they pass another mandate,” Riordan says. “It gets in the way of teaching reading, writing and math.”

Mandates, he adds, create their own bureaucracies that devour tax dollars, keeping money from getting into classrooms for teachers, computers and books.

Riordan wants to make it easier to fire principals. “A strong principal will magically raise the level of teachers,” he says.

He thinks it should be simpler for parents to learn how their kids are doing in school “so people will get angry and insist that something be done, hold the leaders accountable.”

Riordan plans to rent an apartment within walking distance of the Capitol and spend most of his time in Sacramento.

This could be a great show -- and I’m betting on a productive performance.