Controller Chick Says She Won’t Run for Mayor

City Controller Laura Chick, who for months has been toying with the idea of running for mayor, announced Thursday that she was instead seeking a second term as controller.

“I really like the job I have now, and I’m not done,” Chick said in an interview.

But she added that she was “not feeling enthusiastic right now” about Mayor James K. Hahn and was pleased that he might face competition in the 2005 election.

Earlier this week, Councilman Bernard C. Parks announced that he was launching an “exploratory” run against Hahn. State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) has also entered the race.

Potential candidates include former Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg and Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, who was Hahn’s opponent last time.

All the challengers are expected to make an issue of federal and county probes into the Hahn administration’s contracting practices.

Those investigations began around the same time that Chick issued an audit of contracting practices in the city’s airport department and accused some officials of engaging in “potential illegal acts.”

Soon afterward, a county grand jury began summoning airport contractors and officials to testify, while the U.S. attorney’s office subpoenaed thousands of pages of contracting records from the airport, harbor and Department of Water and Power.

Chick has also issued a blistering audit of the city’s port department, another agency now being investigated by county and federal officials.

Chick said that more hard-hitting audits were to come. “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” she said in a statement on her plans for a second term.