A YEAR OF CHANGE: NEW SCHOOLS CHIEF, LAPD SCANDALS, TERM-LIMIT MEASURE LEADERS EXPECT PROGRESS IN 2007.

Byline: Daily News

For Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2006 was a year of redemption.

After a disastrous 2005 in which his major policy initiatives were soundly rejected by voters in a special election, a chastened Schwarzenegger instead worked with the Legislature and began a slow comeback.

He won voter approval in November for a $37 billion bond package designed to fund improvements in transportation, housing, flood control and schools.

He also worked with legislators on plans to hike the minimum wage and fight global warming. They also helped him pass a state budget in June, the first on-time spending plan in six years.

Unopposed in the Republican primary, the governor soundly defeated Democratic state Treasurer Phil Angelides in November.

However, the governor is expected to be on crutches for his inauguration ceremony. The seven-time winner of the Mr. Olympia title broke his right thigh bone during a Christmas weekend ski trip in Sun Valley, Idaho.

After surgery and a couple of days in the hospital recuperating, Schwarzenegger is working on his priorities for 2007, which include health care reform, spending some of the new infrastructure bond funds, prison reform and increasing school accountability, all expected to be part of his upcoming State of the State address.

LAUSD 

After a year-long battle to overhaul the Los Angeles Unified School District, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa suffered a major political blow when a judge declared his education-reform law unconstitutional and prohibited it from taking effect on Jan. 1.

Villaraigosa immediately appealed the ruling, seeking implementation of Assembly Bill 1381. In addition to changing the district's governance system, it also would make the mayor directly responsible for three low- performing school ``clusters.''

A hearing on his appeal is expected in early 2007.

As Villaraigosa was maneuvering to take over the school district, the school board was recruiting a successor to Superintendent Roy Romer, who retired after nearly six years as head of LAUSD.

The board appointed retired Navy Adm. David Brewer III, who like Romer had no formal experience as an educator when he was approved in November to head the 708,000-student school district.

Brewer has been meeting with community, civic and government leaders, including Villaraigosa, as he formulates a plan to reduce campus crime and lower the dropout rate.

L.A. city government

Los Angeles gave its City Council members a gift this year when it became one of the few cities in the nation where voters extended term limits for incumbents.

Measure R allows City Council members to serve a third four-year term -- providing the opportunity for a stable political office for many and comeback prospects for others.

The proposal was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Chapter of the League of Women Voters and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, which coupled the extra term with a series of ethics reforms that some officials claimed softened existing standards.

Members of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission and the city's neighborhood councils complained that they were bypassed in the rush to place the measure on the ballot. However, an initial court challenge blocking the election was overturned, and the legal action has languished since the election.

Soon after the measure was passed, Richard Alarcn -- a former councilman who went on to serve eight years in the state Senate and had just been elected to the Assembly -- announced that he will run for his old City Council seat.

Four others have taken out papers to run in the March primary for council District 7.

Immigration 

In the largest protest rally ever in Los Angeles, a crowd estimated at 500,000 jammed downtown streets on March 25 to denounce a federal legislative proposal that would have further criminalized illegal immigration.

The demonstration was part of a nationwide groundswell of marches and rallies to protest a bill passed in December 2005 making it a felony to be an illegal immigrant in America.

In May, the Senate passed sweeping legislation that strengthened border security, established a guest-worker program and created a way for millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the country and eventually become citizens.

Republicans called it ``amnesty'' and responded with more get-tough laws in the House.

In the end, only one immigration measure was signed into law: legislation authorizing 700 miles of fencing along the southern U.S. border.

In the meantime, both sides are looking to the new year. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has signaled that immigration reform will be one of Senate Democrats' top 10 issues in 2007.

Activists said they hope to see legislation by spring.

Santa Susana lab

Nearly 50 years after the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at the Santa Susana Field Lab, studies released in 2006 raised new questions about radioactive contamination in nearby Chatsworth and Simi Valley.

University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Michigan researchers released studies in February that reported higher rates of some cancers within two miles of the Santa Susana Field Lab, and documented ways in which contamination could have migrated from the hilltop lab into the surrounding communities.

And in October, a separate study said the 1959 reactor meltdown may have released up to 300 times more radiation than Pennsylvania's infamous Three Mile Island meltdown, possibly causing some 260 cancer cases.

However, the Boeing Co., which now owns the field lab, repudiated the studies, saying that researchers had relied on flawed information to reach conclusions designed to unnecessarily worry neighbors.

Also this year, Boeing won concessions from water-quality regulators over the amount of contamination allowed in stormwater flowing from the lab into the Los Angeles River and Arroyo Simi.

Police issues

While Los Angeles emerged as the nation's second-safest big city, the Los Angeles Police Department found itself plagued by controversy over several videotaped use-of-force incidents.

Police also struggled against a 6 percent increase in robberies, including a string of San Fernando Valley restaurant heists by a crew dubbed the Ski Mask Bandits.

The Valley also saw a 50 percent increase in gang violence in 2006, with 43 of the 85 homicides reported through Dec. 27 blamed on gang activity.

Unable to get out from under a federal consent decree imposed in the wake of the 1991 Rodney King beating and the 1999 Rampart scandal, the department was reminded of its past as videotapes posted on Internet sites showed officers using force against suspects.

The LAPD also took the lead on local counter-intelligence efforts as it provided much of the staffing for the new Joint Regional Intelligence Center in Norwalk, intended as a model of around-the-clock intelligence gathering, and ramped up Operation Archangel, a $10 million effort to identify and protect hundreds of potential terrorist targets in the region.

Officer Ripatti

The year also proved dangerous for the LAPD, with more than 700 aggravated assaults against officers in the first 11 months. In August, Hollenbeck-area Officer James Tuck was shot with an AK-47 in an incident that nearly cost him his hand.

But one of the more tragic incidents involved Officer Kristina Ripatti, who was paralyzed from the chest down in a shootout with an armed robber.

Her partner, Officer Joe Meyer, shot the robber to death. He also saved Ripatti's life by cutting off the blood flowing from her most serious wound and called for backup. A crush of LAPD personnel descended upon the scene, including Ripatti's husband, Officer Tim Pearce.

As Ripatti recuperated and adjusted to life in a wheelchair, she received an outpouring of phone calls, letters and visits from fellow law enforcement personnel and family that came by the hundreds. ``Extreme Makeover: Home Edition'' arrived in October to build the family a new, handicap-accessible home.

Orange Line

In L.A.'s world of transit, 2006 was the year of the Orange Line.

Hailed as a subway on wheels, the 14-mile busway that cuts through the heart of the San Fernando Valley surpassed ridership expectations six months after it began operating in late 2005, with more than 20,000 boardings a day.

All the excitement has some buzzing that the $330 million busway, erected in three years, should be replicated in other parts of the city.

Already there's an effort under way to extend the Orange Line route northward from Woodland Hills to Chatsworth. Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority formally opened a 600-space Park and Ride lot at Canoga Avenue and Owensmouth Street, which could be eventually be used by commuters hoping to catch the Orange Line to the Metrolink station in Chatsworth.

Late in the year, the MTA was forced to repave several areas of the buswaywhere cracks developed in the rubberized concrete -- a special mixture that was laid to minimize noise through residential neighborhoods. The agency and its contractor are conducting tests to determine the source of the problem.

LAX

Stalled for more than a decade, a $4 billion plan to modernize Los Angeles International Airport took off this year at one of the country's five busiest airports.

The plan was delayed for years by lawsuits, but Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hammered out a settlement in a January deal with neighboring South Bay cities and the grass-roots Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion.

The deal limits the number of passengers to 79.5 million a year by reducing the number of gates that can be built.

The plan also includes safety improvements to airport runways, a new luggage system and an upgrade of the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

Staff Writers Beth Barrett, Naush Boghossian, Kerry Cavanaugh, Lisa Friedman, Brent Hopkins, Rick Orlov, Harrison Sheppard and Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.

CAPTION(S):

8 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 4) Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, right, during his re-election celebration at the Beverly Hilton on Nov. 7. At top from left, passengers make their way off the Orange Line at the North Hollywood hub station. The line celebrated its one-year anniversary; nearly 50 years after the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at the Santa Susana Field Lab, studies released in 2006 raised new questions about radioactive contamination in nearby Chatsworth and Simi Valley; the LAPD found itself plagued by controversy over several videotaped use-of-force incidents.

(5 -- 7) LAPD Officer Kristina Ripatti, above, recovering from gunshot wounds suffered in a shootout with a robbery suspect, prepares to throw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium before the Dodgers play the Pirates as husband Tim Pearce looks on. Top, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa reads to children at Sylmar Elementary School. Right, protesters march along Broadway, demonstrating against proposed federal immigration laws.

Photos by Daily News staff

(8) Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa holds up AB 1381 after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed it into law at the Los Angeles Central Library.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer