Council’s Charter Panel Suggests City Manager Job

What sorts of changes would make Los Angeles’ government work better, cause less voter disaffection and leave areas such as the San Fernando Valley and San Pedro less likely to secede?

Would a city manager help?

How about neighborhood councils to empower voters who now feel unable to influence City Hall?

Offering the first clear insights into its thinking, the staff of the appointed City Charter reform commission has asked a series of questions such as these to help the group focus on ways to revise the document that functions as Los Angeles’ constitution.

In a report titled “Road to Decision,� scheduled to be made public today, the staff suggests one way around the potentially crippling debate over whether mayoral power should be increased at the expense of the City Council’s.

“A strong new office, such as a city manager, might be created, and significant administrative powers could be redirected to this office from commissions, the council and even the mayor,� the report says.

The appointed commission--one of two working on revising the charter--has invited Mayor Richard Riordan to speak on the subject at one of a number of public hearings it has scheduled in the coming months, the first of which is set for 6 tonight at the Department of Water and Power building downtown.

The existence of two commissions--the appointed panel and an elected one--grew out of a dispute between Riordan and the council. The disagreement has at its heart the council’s fear of a mayoral move to rein in its extensive administrative powers.

Riordan, who has made no secret of his desire to do just that, initially agreed to have only one commission, appointed by city leaders. But he demanded that the council not alter the panel’s recommendations and instead send them directly to voters. The council balked, and Riordan privately raised $2 million to fund an initiative that created an elected panel, answerable only to voters. That commission remains penniless as a result of other mayor-council disputes and is still trying to get organized.

The appointed panel, meanwhile, hopes to have a rewritten charter on the April 1999 ballot.

In its report this week, the panel’s staff suggested that the charter, drafted in 1925, was seen then as a pathway to clean government with lots of checks and balances.

“If corruption was the great fear in 1925, then public disaffection from a government often seen as inefficient and unresponsive, and the tension between neighborhoods and the greater community, are the concerns we must address today,� said the staff, which is directed by political science teacher Raphael Sonenshein.

The staff urged the commission to consider pruning some of the 400 approved amendments to the charter and consigning them to more elastic administrative codes.

The report presented pro and con views on questions such as:

* Should the power of the mayor be increased? The mayor’s office “seems to be neither as weak as commonly believed nor as strong as other big-city mayoralties,� the staff said. * Should the powers of the City Council be decreased? Council members have vast administrative authority--over zoning matters in their own districts, for example--that is reserved for chief executives in many municipalities. * Should citizen commissions continue to function as department heads? If commissions were abandoned, government could be streamlined by having departments report directly to the mayor. But that might not be worth the cost. * Should elections be changed? Naysayers fear that city issues would suffer from inattention if nonpartisan local races were changed to coincide with more intriguing state and federal contests. But proponents argue that interest would increase because more voters, mobilized by political parties, would come to the polls. * Should neighborhood councils be set up? Critics say these would be expensive and result in an obstructionist, not-in-my-backyard mentality that could inhibit attention to citywide needs. Proponents say they would bring democracy closer to home.