`8 YEARS IS ENOUGH' RIORDAN: SO MUCH STILL TO DO IN JUST 6 MONTHS.

Byline: Rick Orlov Staff Writer

As he enters the final six months as Los Angeles mayor, Richard Riordan looks out of the eighth floor window of his office at the city he sought to turn around and talks about there being so little time but so much still to do.

``I don't want to be a lame duck for one second,'' Riordan said in an interview.

``I don't walk like a duck. I don't quack like a duck. And I think the way to avoid that is to run the city as if I was running for re-election. I want to make the city better in six months than it is today.''

And there is much to be done:

--Restoring the luster of the Los Angeles Police Department - hammered by the Rampart Division case, under scrutiny of a federal consent decree, challenged by rising crime and losing more and more officers each day.

--Providing more public service to improve the quality of life of neighborhoods to try to fight off secession drives in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and Harbor area.

--Deal with an educational system for which he has no direct control, but has changed by backing, financially and politically, a new board majority.

The final months of power is something all politicians must go through, but is particularly ironic for Riordan, who qualified and backed the voter- approved term limits for city officials to two four-year terms.

He is confident he could win another term, but is forced to watch as six major candidates seek to succeed him.

Is eight years too short a time to govern well?

``That's a tough one,'' Riordan said. ``Egotistically, I think I could get more things done with another term. At the same time, there's this theory in private business that seven or eight years is about it for someone to be effective. That's when they buy the Gulf Stream jet and start golfing around the world with friends.

``I think, after eight years, the title of mayor becomes more important than the accomplishments. I think eight years is enough.''

But, in the meantime, Riordan is trying to push himself to new levels of activism.

The past year has seen him doing most of his work out of the public eye - raising money for the Democratic National Convention, dealing with the federal Department of Justice over the consent decree and negotiating settlements in strikes by janitors and Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers.

These are all accomplishments he ticks off as successes of the past year. He does not mention the much-maligned and joked about millennium celebration.

The consent decree over the LAPD still rankles him, even after he agreed to drop his veto threat and negotiate with the U.S. Justice Department.

``We did the best we could with the consent decree, but I'm still opposed to it,'' Riordan said. ``I don't think we should turn the department over to some faceless bureaucrat, and I'm not going to forget the primary mission of the LAPD is to protect and serve the people of Los Angeles.

``I'm hearing talk that it might take 300, 400, 500 people in the LAPD to enforce the consent decree,'' Riordan said. ``I'm telling you that if it takes 300, 400, 500 officers off the street, I'm ready to be held in contempt by the courts and go to jail. That would be totally unacceptable.''

In the past two months, he has proposed a new direction for the LAPD, launching a new initiative to empower neighborhoods. And within the next two weeks he's expected to make a major address involving the Los Angeles Unified School District.

``It's like he's taken a page from the (President) Bill Clinton playbook to make sure he means something right up to his final days in office,'' said political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe.

``What both of them are doing, essentially, is trying to craft a legacy in the last months of their terms.''

The difficulty in assessing Riordan's success, she said, is that much of what he started remains unfinished and questions abound about the future.

``The expansion at (Los Angeles International Airport) is unfinished and will be up to the next mayor to deal with,'' Jeffe said. ``He changed the City Charter, but most of the power will be with the next mayor.

``He came in at a time of turmoil in the Los Angeles Police Department and the Police Department is still in turmoil. He came in at a time of turmoil in the school system and he staked out a goal of righting its problems, and the district is still in turmoil.

``He fought against secession and there are more secession movements than ever. Dick Riordan's legacy is still being played out and, historically, that's not surprising. It will be years before we know how well he did.''

Even one who has been frequently at odds with the mayor, City Attorney James Hahn, who wants to succeed Riordan, gives him high marks for his efforts.

``People will remember him as a guy who didn't need this job,'' Hahn said.

``He is very well off, but he came in and rolled up his sleeves and got to work. If he gets credit for anything, it should be for focusing attention on schools more than any mayor in our history. The rest, well, we'll just have to see.''

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Photo: (color) RIORDAN