Candidates Focus on Education

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn accused challenger Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday of mismanaging a $9-billion state bond measure to the detriment of the city’s schools, while the city councilman charged that the incumbent has neglected the education system for four years.

With just three weeks to go before the May 17 mayoral runoff, Hahn and Villaraigosa sparred from miles apart over education even though the City Charter does not give the mayor power over the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The latest rancor comes as the candidates prepare to advertise on broadcast television this week. Parke Skelton, a campaign consultant for Villaraigosa, said the councilman’s first ad would be a positive one and might start as soon as today.

The education issue heated up last week when both Hahn and Villaraigosa said for the first time that the mayor should have some control over schools.

The emphasis is not surprising, said Larry Levine, a political consultant who is not involved with either campaign.

“Other than traffic, education is the subject the voters are most concerned about,” he said.

During a campaign stop at Washington Preparatory High School in South Los Angeles, Villaraigosa, a former Assembly speaker, again touted his role as an author of Proposition 1A, the $9-billion school-bond measure approved by state voters in 1998.

He told students at the school that it is one reason his accomplishments on schools “tower above” Hahn’s record.

“For four years, he has proposed nothing -- absolutely nothing -- with respect to education,” Villaraigosa said. “When I was in the Assembly, I was one of the strongest advocates for schools. I authored the largest initiative to reduce class size, the largest initiative to rebuild and modernize our schools.”

But Hahn said that wealthier, suburban districts had an advantage over the Los Angeles schools in competing for the state bond funds.

“Antonio’s management of that school bond was a meltdown of tragic proportions,” Hahn said outside Cahuenga Elementary School in Koreatown. “It was a management meltdown because the money that should have gone to build more schools here in Los Angeles went to

Hahn said that, in the 16 months after the measure passed, L.A. Unified received just $22 million in bond funds, while districts in the rest of the state received a total of $640 million.

“Parents from this school had to go to court and say there’s something terribly wrong with this picture,” Hahn said.

Glenn Gritzner, special assistant to the district superintendent, said the legislation distributed money on a first-come, first-served basis and, while a suburban district could quickly identify vacant land, L.A. Unified had a harder time.

The lawsuit led to a new system that gave the L.A. district a better chance to compete, Gritzner said.

“The LAUSD needed more time because they were so slow, and they got it,” said Ace Smith, a campaign consultant for Villaraigosa.

But Hahn contended that even after the lawsuit, the district received about $425 million, “still far less than the $1 billion that Mr. Villaraigosa said Los Angeles would receive for new schools.”

Smith said that L.A. Unified received $1.17 billion in bond funds, including $625 million for new school construction.

Gritzner verified that Villaraigosa’s numbers were correct.

Smith accused Hahn of distorting the facts to revive a slumping campaign. “Jim Hahn should do his homework before showing up to an exam,” Smith said.

The mayor also said that Villaraigosa’s “own representative on that state allocation board actually was working to block Los Angeles School District from getting the funding it needed to build more schools.”

Hahn campaign manager Kam Kuwata said the mayor was referring to former Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Glendale).

In 1999, Wildman blocked $278 million from going to L.A. Unified because he did not trust the district to spend the money on the purposes it was meant for -- building elementary schools and other early education centers to ease crowding.

Instead, Wildman feared that the money would go to projects like the Belmont Learning Complex, the troubled $200-million project west of downtown Los Angeles.

At the time, Wildman was also one of a number of critics who blamed the district for failing to get its applications for bond money in on time, partly because officials started the site selection for proposed schools too late.

Smith said it was “nonsense” that Villaraigosa or a representative tried to make it harder for Los Angeles to get funding.

“In fact, it was through Antonio’s efforts to rewrite the rules that school modernization projects in urban districts received funding,” Smith said, referring to the new formula that made Los Angeles more competitive.

Hahn used the example of the bond measure to underscore one of his campaign themes -- that Villaraigosa talks a good game, but doesn’t always deliver.

“To me, for him to call this the crowning jewel of his legislative year when he passed this -- what we ended up with was a cheap dime store rhinestone here in the city of Los Angeles,” Hahn said. “This campaign is about who’s going to be an effective leader.”

Villaraigosa took up the same theme, attacking Hahn’s leadership during an appearance at the high school where he took questions from a class of Advanced Placement history students for the “Talk of the City” radio show on KPCC-FM (89.3).

“I just felt like the city was stagnant, that we were too focused on corruption probes and investigations, that we were paralyzed by scandal, that we needed a strong leader,” Villaraigosa said, when asked why he decided to run.

Hahn later attended the dedication of the renovated Van Nuys City Hall, calling it “another bridge between city government and the people of Los Angeles.”

Villaraigosa criticized the mayor for the $383,000 in overtime spent by the city to get the renovation of the circa-1933 building far enough along for a dedication ceremony before the election.

“What the mayor did spending tens of thousands of dollars to speed up Van Nuys City Hall was another example of taxpayer waste,” Villaraigosa said.

Hahn has denied he requested the overtime.