Alarcon Vows to Fight for Disabled as Mayor

State Sen. Richard Alarcon said Wednesday that if he is elected mayor of Los Angeles he would appoint a disabled person to the county transit board to help expand transportation services for the disabled.

Addressing an audience of mostly disabled people, the Sun Valley Democrat pledged that he would press for more curb cuts in sidewalks and better access for the disabled to affordable housing.

He also promised to fight any effort to shut down the city Department on Disability for budget reasons.

The department is one of several small agencies that some city officials have talked about consolidating, although no proposal is pending.

“Let’s make Los Angeles a model city for the disabled,” Alarcon told the audience of 40 at a forum sponsored by Communities Actively Living Independent and Free, the Westside Center for Independent Living and other groups.

The groups invited Mayor James K. Hahn and four major challengers to attend the forum in downtown Los Angeles, but only Alarcon showed up.

Lillibeth Navarro, a founding director of Communities Actively Living Independent and Free, said Alarcon’s speech convinced her to vote for Alarcon, and she warned candidates not to ignore the more than 440,000 disabled residents in Los Angeles.

“By coming to our community, you show tremendous respect to our people, who are, after all, senator, a very powerful voting bloc,” Navarro said.

Councilmen Bernard C. Parks and Antonio Villaraigosa were attending a council debate on a sales tax measure to expand the police force at the time of the forum. Hahn held a news conference about the same time to discuss a controversial police shooting of a 13-year-old African American boy. Former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg was unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict.

To explain why he was the only candidate to appear, Alarcon, who has made political finance reform a campaign theme, jokingly said: “Where is everybody else? You mean you don’t have thousands and thousands of dollars to contribute to campaigns?”