Villaraigosa Urges Team to Help Him

Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa convened the first meeting of his enormous transition team Tuesday morning, exhorting the group to find and recruit people to fulfill his agenda.

“The work is going to be in identifying the talent,” he said over soggy danish and bagels at the California Science Center in Exposition Park.

Aides also distributed a nine-page plan, titled “A Fresh Start,” that detailed such priorities as hiring 1,000 more police officers, expanding the mayor’s role in the public schools, easing gridlock and attracting more business.

The plan provided few details on how those civic hopes might be realized.

But Villaraigosa told the team, which is composed of 81 volunteers who represent a broad cross-section of prominent Angelenos, that it was their job to help him recruit the people who could make it happen.

No major decisions or ideas were floated.

“That wasn’t the purpose of today,” Villaraigosa said as he prepared to zip off to his next event.

The mayor can appoint more than 350 commissioners, about 120 staff members and 30 department heads. Beyond that, Villaraigosa said, he is thinking not just about jobs within the city bureaucracy, but also “the non-governmental efforts that we’re going to engage in.”

“We put together, you know, the business world with labor, the philanthropic community, the civil rights community, the faith-based communities, all of the people that make up stakeholders,” he said, adding that it was important “in a city like this to have all of us at the table.”

On May 17, Villaraigosa defeated Mayor James K. Hahn in a landslide to become the city’s first Latino mayor in more than a century. The next week, he appointed a transition team that included such heavyweights as Sherry Lansing, former head of Paramount Pictures, and Magic Johnson, basketball legend and businessman.

Neither attended Tuesday’s meeting, but 66 other team members did, including Albert Carnesale, the chancellor of UCLA, and Lynn Pike, the president of Bank of America California.

As they were leaving, many team members said they were energized about helping the administration.

“It fulfilled all my expectations,” said Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farmworkers of America and a member of the team. “It shows he is going to follow through on the commitments he made when he was running.”

John Mack, outgoing president of the Los Angeles Urban League and a team member, said the room was filled with “a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and hope.”

There was little time for the excitement to dissipate: Unlike many gatherings of civic leaders, this one lasted less than an hour.

It included an invocation from the Rev. R.A. Williams and short speeches from Villaraigosa, transition team Chairman Bob Hertzberg and transition office chief Robin Kramer, the chief of staff to former Mayor Richard Riordan.

Hertzberg opposed Villaraigosa in the mayoral race, but was eliminated in the March election. Like Villaraigosa, he is a former Assembly speaker. He and the mayor-elect lived together in Sacramento when both were in the Assembly.

A few years ago, they had a falling out, but have lately been singing each other’s praises.

“The partnership is back, my friends, the partnership is back,” Hertzberg said.

Also Tuesday, the city clerk officially certified the results of the May 17 election, confirming that Villaraigosa trounced Hahn 58.6% to 41.4%.

Today, the mayor-elect was to be in Washington, D.C., in a lightning-quick trip in which he was expected to meet with the city’s lobbyist to talk about how to get more federal funds for the city, speak at national conferences and sit for media interviews.

Then, without spending one night in the nation’s capital, Villaraigosa planned to fly back to Los Angeles. He will be sworn in July 1.

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Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report.