Riordan’s Transition Team Draws on Business World : City Hall: Mayor-elect names advisers who represent a spectrum of ethnic groups and areas, including the Valley.

Reaching into the worlds of business, entertainment and politics, Los Angeles Mayor-elect Richard Riordan on Friday named a team of transition advisers to select his senior staff, choose dozens of citizen commissioners, streamline the organization of the mayor’s office and move swiftly to expand police service.

The 10-member Riordan transition committee is an early indication of how heavily the businessman and lawyer plans to rely on the business community to straighten out what he sees as a considerable mess at City Hall.

From Hollywood film executive Dawn Steel to UCLA business management expert William G. Ouchi, the committee relies heavily on Riordan’s roots in the corporate world.

“We are trying to see if we can run this government in a more businesslike manner, to run it more efficiently,” said William Wardlaw, who will chair the committee after managing Riordan’s campaign. “That’s why we have a lot of business people on this team. These are people who worry day in and day out about efficiency. We want to capture that and bring it to Los Angeles.”

Transition officials are scheduled to announce a staff today to work with their committee. The staffers--who are expected to be paid out of campaign funds or other private contributions--will begin preparing for early policy initiatives and for Riordan’s July 1 inauguration.

After two harried days as mayor-elect, Riordan has retreated to Idaho for a five-day rest. By late morning Friday, he was sitting by a river, getting ready to do some fly-fishing as his representatives in Los Angeles readied the transition team announcement.

When the team sits down Monday morning in Wardlaw’s office, it will face a daunting challenge. In 17 days, the advisers are supposed to choose a senior mayoral staff, begin to line up the nearly 200 commissioners Riordan must appoint and set priorities for Riordan’s first days in office.

Volunteers, meanwhile, have already begun to research the organization of the mayor’s office and other departments in hopes of drawing more efficient plans. Riordan has promised to cut the mayor’s office budget by 20%.

Wardlaw, Steel, Ouchi and their fellow advisers are expected to drop many of their other business activities while they draw up the plans. Joining them will be Angie Alatorre, a public relations executive and wife of City Councilman Richard Alatorre; Pamela Chin, an Arco attorney and president-elect of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Assn.; Nick Patsaouras, a former mayoral candidate and ex-county transportation commissioner who owns an engineering firm; Gilbert T. Ray, an attorney with the law firm O’Melveny & Myers; Carol Rowen, a marketing director who lost a state Senate campaign last spring; Frank M. Sanchez, a McDonald’s franchise owner who was treasurer for the Riordan campaign and lawyer Stan Sanders, another unsuccessful mayoral candidate.

The group was selected because of their expertise in various fields, Wardlaw said, calling Ouchi “one of the greatest management experts in the worlds” and Steel “a leader in one of the most important industries in this town, the entertainment industry.”

Wardlaw insisted that the committee had not been selected based on ethnicity or geography. “These are not people who should be pigeonholed,” he said.

Wardlaw said the committee had been chosen for ability and breadth of experience alone. “These are not people who should be pigeonholed,” he said.

But others acknowledged the committee was designed to represent a spectrum of ethnic groups and areas. It includes two African-American members, two Latinos, two Asian-Americans and two representatives from the San Fernando Valley, the region most responsible for putting Riordan in office.

Rowen said she believes she was selected to represent the Valley. “The Valley has been treated as a stepchild,” she said. “Our goal is to be considered and brought into city government.”

The committee is expected to choose a mayoral staff and commissioners first and then consider issues. Besides setting an agenda, it will try to make plans to put Riordan’s central campaign promises into action as soon as possible.

A plan to lease Los Angeles International Airport to pay for more police could take a year to complete, so the committee will discuss methods for expanding the force in the short term. Expanded service of reserve officers or increased funding for police overtime are among the possibilities.

“That is the kind of thing this group has to bring into focus,” Wardlaw said. “Dick made the commitment from Day 1 to put more police on the street. You can’t deal with anything else until you deal with public safety.”

Ouchi has been working with the Reason Foundation on policy initiatives for Riordan’s first 100 days. The conservative think tank has advocated the lease or sale of the airport.

Ray may take on police issues and downtown development since he was a member of the Christopher Commission and also an executive with the Central City Assn.

Steel, best known as Hollywood’s first female studio chief, running Columbia Pictures from 1987 to 1990, has been asked to submit names of people who are not associated with government and who might make good candidates for city commissions.

The whole question of how a mayoral transition should be conducted has raised provocative questions in a city that has not had to respond to the task in 20 years.

A staff must be paid--even for such mundane tasks as answering mail and phone calls that are already spilling into City Hall for a mayor who will not arrive for nearly three weeks.

Although the Riordan team has plans for bringing on a handful of paid staff members, no one can say how the employees would be paid. “What’s funny about this and one of the disadvantages of going 20 years without a new mayor is that no one has a . . . clue about how this works,” said one official who is familiar with the issue.

The city Ethics Commission has taken up the issue, along with the question of who will pay for the mayor’s inauguration.

Riordan advisers have said they plan to privately finance all of the transition expenses and at least some of the inaugural costs, but Ethics Commission Executive Director Ben Bycel said: “There really isn’t any clear statement in city or state law on how you establish funds to pay for a transition or inaugural.

No price tags have been assigned to either project, but Bycel said “there has been a tremendous amount of discussion on how to do it right, which is always music to an Ethics Commission’s ears.”

Twenty years ago, Bradley took over with considerable hoopla, including a party with lots of celebrities and three dance bands that drew 5,000 paying guests to the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren administered Bradley’s oath of office, Quincy Jones led an orchestra in “The Impossible Dream,” and the Los Angeles Philharmonic brass section performed. Actor Lloyd Bridges was master of ceremonies.

Transition committee members promised that Riordan’s inaugural will not be a lavish affair. Patsaouras promised he would “fight for the bare minimum.

Ray added that with all the problems facing Los Angeles, “parties are low on my list.”

The Ethics Commission, meanwhile, is working with Riordan’s attorney, Gary Mendoza, to arrange for the mayor-elect’s personal investments to be placed in blind trust.

Mendoza, a lawyer with the firm of Riordan & McKinzie, will also work out the terms of the mayor-elect’s disengagement from the law firm he founded.

Riordan’s partners want to buy out his interest in the firm but retain the use of his last name in the firm’s title, Mendoza said.

Riordan & McKinzie is “a name we’ve had since 1986,” he said. “We’ve developed a substantial amount of goodwill associated with that name, entirely independent of the election.” The firm’s lawyers said they would be unfairly penalized if they had to drop Riordan’s name.

Mendoza said that other attorneys are working on the nuts and bolts of a blind trust for Riordan’s estimated $100 million in assets, relying on Bradley’s blind trust as “a useful model.”

Still undecided is the fate of Getty House, the mayor’s official residence in Hancock Park, which Riordan has said he will forsake in favor of his Brentwood mansion.

Getty House was given to the city by Getty Oil Co. in 1976, under the condition that it be used as the mayor’s residence, and officials in the city attorney’s office said they are uncertain whether the home can be used for another purpose.

Despite the plethora of issues, Bradley aide Phil Depoian said the transition has been extremely smooth so far. “It’s not like a hostile takeover,” he said. “Twenty years ago, when Bradley took over from (Sam) Yorty, that was hostile. We got no help and literally took over an empty office.”

Times staff writers Rich Connell, Denise Gellene, Frederick M. Muir, Alan Citron and Marc Lacey contributed to this story.

The Transition Team

PAMELA CHIN, 34

* Senior attorney with Arco since 1988 and earlier with the law firm of Riordan & McKinzie. She is president-elect of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Assn. and was an active campaigner for Riordan.

WILLIAM G. OUCHI, 49

* Management professor at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. Author of “Theory Z,” a 1981 bestseller that argued that successful corporations encourage worker participation. Has advised the L.A. Police Department.

NICK PATSAOURAS, 49

* Founded the engineering firm of Patsaouras & Associates. Former Southern California Rapid Transit District board member and county transportation commissioner. Ran for mayor in the April primary.

GILBERT T. RAY, 48

* A partner in the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, was active in President Clinton’s campaign. Served as executive director of the Christopher Commission and was a member of city Ethics Commission.

CAROL ROWEN, 58

* Marketing director for Price, Raffel & Browne, a Century City-based pension consulting firm. She is incoming chairwoman of California Republicans for Choice.

STAN SANDERS, 50

* Attorney and candidate for mayor in the primary who later campaigned for Riordan. A football star from Watts and a Rhodes Scholar, he is a trustee of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and a director of the NCAA Foundation.

DAWN STEEL, 46

* Best known as Hollywood’s first woman studio chief, running Columbia Pictures from 1987 to 1990. She now is an independent producer and works with the Pediatric AIDS Foundation and UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

WILLIAM WARDLAW, 46

* Was Riordan’s campaign director and is a lawyer and partner in the leveraged buyout firm of Freeman & Spogli, with which Riordan is also associated. Before that, he served as managing partner of Riordan’s law firm, Riordan & McKinzie.

ANGIE ALATORRE

* Consultant to public affairs firm Eventfully Yours. The wife of City Councilman Richard Alatorre, she is a member of the National Women’s Political Caucus and a director of the Mariachi Heritage Society and El Sereno Youth Development Corp.

FRANK M. SANCHEZ, 49

* An owner of Sanchez Family Corp., an East Los Angeles-based McDonald’s restaurant franchisee. On the board of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureau. A Democrat, he was treasurer of the Riordan campaign.

Compiled by Times staff writers Frederick M. Muir, Denise Gellene and Alan Citron.