Just past the entrance to Los Angeles City Hall, one steps into a corridor
that turns a tight corner and spills into the grand, marbled, vaulting chamber
that is home to the L.A. City Council. Movie crews often use the chamber as a stand-
in for a cathedral or other stately venue, but seldom as a city hall, which is
an apt coincidence since the city council itself rarely uses the chamber as a
city hall.
The fifteen-member council passes congestion-reduction measures that don't reduce rush-hour traffic, and anticorruption laws that don't lessen corruption. No sooner does it proudly enact the "toughest" antigraffiti laws in the country than a tagger covers a panel inside its front door with ugly whorls of spray paint -- a mocking reminder of how little of what the council does or says ever filters into the public or private life of Los Angeles.
The council operates under what political scientists call a "weak mayoral" system, in which it -- rather than the mayor -- wields vast power over land use, growth, streets, utilities, businesses, parklands, and blight. There had been high hopes that the current council would reject the lethargy of the Bradley era and finally tackle the city's big problems. Instead, its members collect their annual salaries of $90,000-plus as they squander entire afternoons arguing over two-bit engineering contracts and gardeners accused of moonlighting. Lately, the left-leaning body has spent endless hours decrying the "racist" anti-affirmative-action California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI) -- taking two formal votes against the upcoming ballot proposition. That these votes have no bearing whatsoever on anything seems to be of as little interest to council members as the fact that the CCRI apparently enjoys huge support among most of their constituents.
This tragicomedy repeats itself three days a week, as members meet to shovel down junk food, chat on the phone, tell uproarious private jokes, and otherwise insult the handful of well-dressed but baffled citizens who appear at the podium to speak. In the past year, the council has approved just one law that might actually improve life in Los Angeles: an antitruancy measure aimed at epidemic levels of teens in the streets. Some of the council's members are intelligent, committed public servants. Yet as they sit in a horseshoe at their walnut desks, speaking in dramatic tones about misspelled street signs and unlicensed ice-cream vendors, they persistently fail to make meaningful use of the tremendous power at their disposal. A rundown of the personalities who make up the body goes a long way to explaining why.
Nominally in charge is John Ferraro, the compromise-minded council president who among other things controls committee assignments. A well-liked but ineffectual representative of Studio City/Hollywood Hills/Hancock Park, Ferraro often seems exasperated by the petty bickering in council chambers.
As president, Ferraro sits at a center dais several feet above the horseshoe. Seated around him are:
Jackie Goldberg, highly articulate but too accepting of glowing press coverage that downplays the economic and social carnage devastating her Hollywood/Silverlake district. Goldberg wastes her talent on misbegotten 1970s liberalism, often attacking efforts to privatize bloated city services. Lately, she's been railing against the Los Angeles Firemen's Credit Union's reluctance to rename itself the Los Angeles Firefighters' Credit Union, while backing development of a garish Price Club mall that will obliterate a rare forty-five-acre expanse of open land in Atwater Village for the sake of a few hundred minimum-wage jobs.
Mike Hernandez, the most underrated of the members, concerned with true community problems, such as housing shortages and crime, unfortunately handicapped by his odd habit of rapidly bouncing in place and talking in spurts. A traditional liberal, Hernandez grasps economic and historic issues better than his colleagues, but has yet to instill his clean-it-up attitude among residents of his own eastside L.A. district, arguably the most neglected, litter-strewn, graffiti-marred section of town.
Mark Ridley-Thomas, so consumed with getting his name in the paper and putting down Mayor Richard Riordan that one insider says, "Watching Mark claw his way up by stepping on Riordan is wearing thin even with Riordan's enemies." A troubling exemplar of South-Central's new racial politics, he blames everything from the firing of controversial MTA chief Franklin White to criticism of LAPD chief Willie Williams on antiblack racism.
Nate Holden, no longer taken seriously by his peers, despite his recent acquittal on charges of sexual harassment. A veteran populist who fights for his multi-ethnic district, which includes Koreatown, Crenshaw, and Mid-Cities, Holden failed both in his long drive to become mayor and in his efforts to persuade colleagues to place the interests of their individual fiefdoms second to the city's shared problems.
Rudy Svorinich Jr. and Rita Walters, two friendly dim bulbs whose presence is largely irrelevant. Svorinich, a former paint-store owner who represents faraway San Pedro, is a political neophyte clearly in over his head. Walters, for years an ineffective board member of the L.A. Unified School District, is now even more overmatched as a South-Central councilwoman, facing such gritty inner-city problems as wild dogs and nighttime garbage dumping.
Joel Wachs, a quick-witted officer on a ship of fools, author of respected rent-control laws and the one-percent arts-endowment tax on big developers. Wachs, whose district includes the northeastern San Fernando Valley, caused a ruckus last year when he sent staffers out of city hall to purchase supplies directly from the Staples store across First Street instead of using the city's incompetent procurement office.
Ruth Galanter, a Yale-educated Venice liberal who warns of "more riots" if the anti-affirmative-action initiative passes. The Sixth District council slot was once a powerful post, but under Galanter -- who has disappointed the environmentalists who elected her (most recently by giving her blessing to DreamWorks SKG's huge Playa Vista development) -- it has become inconsequential.
Mike Feuer, the smart, reed-thin attorney who filled the Westside/Sherman Oaks seat of departed powerhouse Zev Yaroslavsky. Too new to have made a real mark, Feuer appears to be joining the council's increasingly out-of-touch liberal majority, which keeps insisting that both Riordan and his prospective appointees to such posts as the library and parks commissions publicly denounce the CCRI, the council's one true passion.
Laura Chick, disliked by some colleagues because she rightly insists they ought to be doing something about the economic and visual decline of neighborhoods. The outspoken west Valley councilwoman authored the recently passed antitruancy law and is pushing a tax break to lure businesses to L.A. But she has few allies -- a result, in part, of her habit of questioning the pet projects of fellow council members, and her penchant for blasting Riordan even while adopting his ideas.
Marvin Braude, now white-haired and cranky, with an impressive legislative legacy, from the ban on oil drilling on the beaches to the ban on smoking in L.A. restaurants. Unlike most council members, the brainy Westside/southwest Valley representative still appreciates the emperor's lack of clothes, regularly skewering his colleagues with such remarks as, "Aren't we supposed to legislate, not obsess over every single little thing that comes our way?" and, "What is our goal here -- just to embarrass the mayor?"
Hal Bernson, the council's lone white conservative, author of the strict earthquake standards that probably saved many lives in Northridge. Bernson is so afraid of his most vicious liberal colleagues that he ducks out when they schedule votes on the affirmative-action initiative. Though a pro-growther, he has shown a surprising soft spot for environmental treasures in his northwest Valley district, such as Stoney Point and Chatsworth Reservoir.
Richard Alatorre, the smartest, most powerful, and slyest of the lot. He wields major influence as a member of the subway-building Metropolitan Transportation Authority and as a key supporter of the proposed Catellus megacomplex in his eastside/downtown district. The only thing holding Alatorre back from greater things is his street-thug persona. At one closed-door meeting, he uttered the F-word so many times that Ferraro finally had to caution him, noting, "Two ladies are present" -- whereupon Alatorre turned to the women and said, "Could you please leave?" Still, he is widely popular, and at age 52 is adopting his recently orphaned young niece.
Richard Alarcon, a mirror-loving bureaucrat from the north-central Valley who struggles to find something valuable to do. He recently proposed a major commercial development for the abandoned General Motors plant in Panorama City, to be financed by actor Tom Selleck's family. Given to pointless dramatics, Alarcon has compared the CCRI to Hitler's Mein Kampf.
At bottom, the council's problem is that it cannot see the link between its own shortcomings and the deepening problems of the city it is supposed to be governing. While both the municipal infrastructure and public civility founder, its members continue to operate in blissful disconnect, mired in minor brushfires and small-time political feuds. In the end, they resemble nothing so much as members of an L.A. street gang, unconcerned about the decline of the city as long as they get to be in charge.