An Eclectic Coalition Unites to Fight Charter Reform Measure

While supporters of a ballot proposal to overhaul the Los Angeles City Charter have put together a broad coalition of civic leaders to back their campaign, opponents are building a smaller alliance of unlikely bedfellows, united only by their common distaste for the measure.

Opponents range from liberals such as Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg and state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), who believe the new charter goes too far in empowering the city’s mayor, to conservatives such as elected charter commission member Paula Boland, who feel it does not go far enough.

Former Rep. Bobbi Fiedler has argued that the charter gives the council too much power; Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. believes it takes too much away.

Most of the city’s organized labor movement either is neutral or supports the proposed charter. But the city firefighters union, under the leadership of pugnacious President Ken Buzzell, has come out vehemently against it.

In the latest issue of the Los Angeles Firefighter, Buzzell complains that the proposal “does very little in the way of streamlining the bureaucratic process” and argues that the years of work that produced the document were based on meetings “where chaos ruled supreme and facts and truth were not allowed to interfere with the process.”

Meanwhile, one local leader, former Police Commission member and longtime liberal activist Stanley Sheinbaum, signed the ballot argument opposing the charter and then had second thoughts. Although he declined to go into detail, Sheinbaum said Friday that he now is “basically a supporter.”

Opponents have formed a committee and begun meeting to discuss a campaign strategy, but some observers say their efforts are hobbled by their conflicting perspectives on the charter and by a lack of campaign money, in contrast to about $500,000 already raised by Mayor Richard Riordan and his allies supporting the charter.

Charter proponents have been working for years on the proposal and are “committed deeply to its passage,” said Bill Wardlaw, Riordan’s best friend and closest advisor. “I’m not so certain that the opposition has that kind of history, working relationships and commitment to the issue.”

Although Riordan acknowledges that the charter proposal did not give him everything he wanted to see in a new city constitution, he has said he supports it because it represents a significant step toward making local government more efficient and holding officials, including the mayor, more accountable. He is joined by dozens of city leaders, including City Atty. James K. Hahn, Controller Rick Tuttle and organizations such as the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the League of Women Voters, the Chamber of Commerce and the Urban League.

“This is a solid document,” said George Kieffer, who headed the appointed charter commission. “That’s demonstrated by the support from such a broad range of interests.”

Although charter opponents cover the ideological and philosophical spectrum, a few common themes crop up in their reasons for rejecting the document.

Differing Views of Power Shift

Some critics complain that it goes too far toward shifting power at City Hall. Among other things, the proposal would give the mayor more authority to fire department heads and commissioners, a shift that some council members see as destabilizing to the balance of power between the city’s executive and legislative branches of government.

During council debate over the proposal, some members argued that the document’s moves toward empowering the mayor create more potential for corruption than the current system, with its diffusion of authority. “Crime, cronyism and corruption” would be the charter’s legacy, Svorinich said.

At the other extreme are those critics who say the charter failed to go far enough toward shaking up City Hall. Some of those opponents, many of them from the San Fernando Valley, had hoped the new charter would create a decentralized system of neighborhood councils with power over things such as zoning in their communities.

Svorinich acknowledged the conflicting perspectives of charter opponents but said they demonstrate the charter’s many problems, not the campaign’s divisions.

“For those that feel it didn’t go far enough and those who feel it went too far, there is a common theme,” he said. “That is that this proposal is flawed.”

A recent Times poll found little public awareness of the charter, but also showed that voters tended to warm to the reforms as they learned more about them. For instance, respondents favored the proposal to create neighborhood councils, as well as charter provisions that would strip some city officials of their Civil Service protection.

Respondents were divided over a charter amendment that would appear on the same ballot that would expand the size of the City Council either to 21 or 25 members, but nevertheless 49% said they would favor expansion even if it increased taxes.

Voters also were conflicted about making the mayor’s office more powerful, with 30% saying that would make them more likely to vote for the charter and 33% saying it would make them less likely to vote for it.

Once told of these provisions, 48% favored the overall charter, compared to 28% who said they were inclined to vote against it.

Members of the commissions that wrote the charter have been speaking on the topic to community groups, and some city departments have held forums of their own. On Friday, however, council critics of the charter questioned the fairness of some of those city-sponsored meetings, arguing that they did not do enough to present both sides of the issue. They asked the city attorney and Ethics Commission to investigate.