Time for Answers as the Thicket of Candidates Clears

Early in the mayoral primary campaign, the word from City Hall was that the new chief executive will face a financial crisis on the first day at work.

The Rodney G. King civil rights trial and the long wait for the verdicts shoved that major concern to the sidelines. But while some Angelenos were stocking up on guns and ammo and others were merely edgy, the Los Angeles City Council’s emergency budget committee kept plugging away at the budget crisis in a series of hearings that didn’t get much notice.

Tuesday, I talked to the committee chairman, Zev Yaroslavsky, who confirmed that our fiscal troubles didn’t go away while L.A. was preoccupied. In fact, they’re worse, so bad as to render meaningless the extravagant campaign promises you’ve received in your mailboxes or through television ads.

I met Yaroslavsky at 8:30 a.m. at his polling place at the Park La Brea recreation center. Accompanied by his 10-year-old son, David, he went into the almost empty room and quickly marked his ballot. Then he drove David to school, the two of them chatting about how to compute percentages. “You’ll be able to figure out batting averages,” Yaroslavsky told the boy. David replied that he already knew how to compute slugging averages, one of baseball’s more arcane statistics.

We had breakfast at Du Par’s at Farmers Market. It was packed, a contrast to the deserted polling place. Yaroslavsky, distressed at the voter turnout, commented: “People are voting with their stomachs.”

Yaroslavsky could have been one of the candidates waiting for results in the mayoral election, but he decided not to run. I asked if he had any regrets. “None whatsoever,” he said. “Last night I had dinner with my two kids. If I had run, I would not have had dinner with them, or taken my son to school today.”

Instead of the mayoral race, Yaroslavsky turned his attention to his City Council reelection campaign and the budget crisis, caused by a recession that reduced both city tax revenues and state aid.

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, the city deficit is projected at $190 million, which Mayor Tom Bradley wants to eliminate with major service cuts and the first municipal employee layoffs in many years.

Cuts contemplated for the public libraries, for example, would reduce service from six days a week to five. This is bad news to youngsters who have been introduced to books at the public library. The same holds true for immigrants who are learning English by laboring over the books they borrow.

On July 1, when the new mayor takes office, the situation is expected to grow worse. By then, Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature, facing a deficit of their own, are likely to reduce state aid to Los Angeles by at least $100 million. That would mean the new mayor would have to begin the search for $100 million or more the first day on the job.

“Our problem is we are spending more than we are taking in,” said Yaroslavsky.

The mayor won’t be able to make cuts without council approval, Yaroslavsky said. “The council will be running the city until the new mayor gets his sea legs,” Yaroslavsky warned.

The idea of the new mayor being confronted by a council that is jealous of its power inspires fears of deadlock. And, as if it weren’t tough enough dealing with the council’s 15 duchesses and dukes, the mayor will have to fly to Sacramento to beg for mercy in a Capitol where hostility to big cities is one of the few political stands shared by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

Despite Yaroslavsky’s ringing affirmation of council power, the City Charter makes the mayor the main person on fiscal matters. Budgeting probably is the mayor’s most important job.

During the primary, some differences were revealed among the rival candidates. Councilman Michael Woo, for example, told host Warren Olney on KCRW’s “Which Way L.A.” last month that he would consider “new fees or new taxes after we make all the existing cuts in existing programs.” On the same show, attorney Richard Riordan said, “We’re going to cut taxes somewhere down the line.” He proposed leasing Los Angeles International Airport and allowing private enterprise to run garbage collection and street maintenance, which is probably unacceptable to the City Council. Assemblyman Richard Katz also went after the airport and Councilman Joel Wachs favored cutting funds for sewage disposal.

Most of their ideas were vague or unattainable. They shed no light on the important political question of how they would deal with recalcitrant City Council members, legislators and Gov. Wilson.

Now that the thicket of primary candidates has been cleared away, it may be easier to get answers.