Thursday, February 11, 1999
Los Angeles considers rewriting city charter
COMMISSION: Revisions update representation, council member
needs
By Mason Stockstill
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Tonight, the Los Angeles City Council will consider a proposal
to radically rewrite the city charter, the document that defines
how city government functions.
The proposal before the city council represents the work of two
separate charter reform commissions, one elected by the people and
one appointed by the city council. The two commissions have been
working for over two years on separate charter proposals for the
upcoming June election, and they have only recently decided to
compromise their differences and submit one proposal to the city
council for approval to get on the ballot.
"It’s been such a long and draining process," said elected
commission Chairman Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law
professor at USC.
At stake is the very way the Los Angeles government runs. The
proposed charter contains provisions ranging from how much power
the mayor holds in firing department heads and approving
legislation to how many members the city council should have.
"(This) action is a step in the right direction, and which
results in a proposal I can support," said Mayor Richard Riordan,
referring to the compromise package, in a statement.
Although they had been working on two separate proposals – often
reaching different conclusions on various issues – in the end the
two reform commissions decided to produce one unified compromise
proposal.
Their reasoning was that if voters were given two competing
charter proposals on the ballot, they would be overwhelmed by the
long, wordy plans and not vote for either of them. By placing only
one proposal on the ballot, the commissioners figured there would
be a greater chance of its passage.
"After a lot of dialogue, we discovered that charter reform was
doomed if the public was presented with two dueling charter reform
proposals," said appointed Commissioner Joe Mandel, also UCLA’s
vice chancellor of legal affairs. "The topic of charter reform is
dry and difficult enough as it is."
The current L.A. charter has been in effect since 1925. However,
according to the appointed charter reform commission’s website,
hundreds of voter-approved changes have been made to the charter
since then, weakening much of its original coherence.
In addition, many commissioners feel that since Los Angeles has
grown so much in the last 70 years that the current charter is out
of date and doesn’t work for today’s large, diverse
constituencies.
"Recent discussion regarding the possible secession from the
city of the San Fernando Valley and other areas highlight the
perception of many residents that they do not have an adequate
voice in the affairs of this city," said City Administrative
Officer Keith Comrie.
In fact, the entire process of charter reform was partly
conceived as a way to placate many Valley activists, who have been
attempting for years to secede from the city of Los Angeles,
claiming that their voices are not represented on the city
council.
But Valley residents are not alone in the charges of
non-representation. Los Angeles has grown so large that members of
the elected reform commission supported the idea of creating
neighborhood councils. These councils would be elected by area
residents, and would be able to offer advice and input to the city
council on issues and concerns from their neighborhoods.
Such neighborhood councils will not appear on the charter
proposal that goes to the city council tonight, however.
In addition to supporting these councils, both commissions
favored increasing the number of representatives on the city
council. The current number of members, 15, is too low,
commissioners say.
"At the moment, with 15 council members and a population of 3.5
million, each council person represents over 200,000 constituents,"
Mandel said. "People complain continuously about the lack of access
to their elected government representatives."
Suggestions for the new number of council members have ranged as
high as 35. Yet, the two commissions decided to let the voters
choose the council’s new size. The charter proposal will leave the
council’s size at 15, and two amendments on the budget give voters
the option of increasing that number to 21 or 25.
Mayor Riordan, who spearheaded the reform effort, has not taken
an active role in defining the proposals, though he had been very
active in lobbying for certain changes to the charter.
Chief among these was the right for Los Angeles’s mayor to fire
department heads without requiring the consent or approval of city
council members. The compromise package now gives the mayor the
power only to fire citizen commissioners (except for the ethics and
police commissioners).
While the compromise package left many commissioners on both
panels with a sour taste in their mouths, there is still an outside
chance that there will be more than one charter proposal on the
ballot. Should the city council make any changes to the compromise
proposal tonight or in any successive meetings before approving it,
the elected reform commission can still submit its own proposal for
the June ballot.
With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.
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