COUNTERPOINT: CHARTER REFORM AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY WITH PRESENT SETUP.

Byline: William F. Powers Jr.

WHAT'S missing from the charter reform proposals now being floated by the elected and appointed commissions? At least the following:

A charter. A charter should be a constitution, not a statutory structure. What they're presenting is a comprehensive and too-detailed code, not an overview of general principles.

Any meaningful reform. The Charter Reform Commissions should have given more thought to their mission - to reform what didn't work and try to make things better. Some of them tried, but the issues became politicized, special-interest groups lobbied them (what else is new?) and the majority came back with pablum. For example, these critical areas were ``blown'':

A. Elected neighborhood councils. The accountability that comes from electing someone to a post wasn't considered sufficiently important. Despite receiving testimony from thousands of folks supporting elected councils, neither commission agreed. The elected commission suggests this might be presented as a ballot postscript, assuming, of course, it doesn't get totally bargained away in the current attempt to negotiate an accord between the commissions. In the best of circumstances, it'll be buried in the ballot.

B. Neighborhood councils with decision-making power. They didn't give any such power to them, even on a local basis. Their argument that elected officials will support advisory commission recommendations because of the political fallout otherwise just ignores the clearly opposite result in the council advisory commissions all over the city, where the council members make no bones about reserving the absolute right to ignore such recommendations if they see fit - and oftentimes do just that. So where's the local empowerment this debate was all about in such a weak system?

C. Neighborhood councils with budgetary control. No meaningful budget is proposed by either commission, so no local issues can be addressed at all, and appointed commissions will be lucky to have enough money to cover staffing, let alone anything meaningful in their communities.

D. Balance of powers. While the mayor should have some line authority over department heads, he needs oversight to prevent loss of key city employees by arbitrary or politically motivated firings. It has thus been proposed that this be by a two-thirds vote of the council to override the firing of a department head. A better approach would be to have managers report to a city manager, a professional manager's manager who reports both to the mayor and council. Then perhaps go to a two-thirds council override or a joint mayor/council commission to decide, but these suggestions were never seriously considered.

E. Planning and land-use control. After much debate, a regionalization of the Planning Commission was suggested, but its members are appointed instead of elected, so there will be issues to which the appointee will likely be beholden to the appointer and thus too vulnerable to the appointer's opinion. There are also too few of them proposed. If the city gets five total, there should be at least two in the Valley to fairly allocate them by population. The one proposed is too few.

And why is local planning on local issues such a bad idea anyway? The assumption is that local folks are dweeb incompetents rather than concerned and capable citizens both sufficiently able and desirous to control their own destinies and face the consequences. Let local planning be in the elected neighborhood council, skip the Planning Commission for appeal and just allow appeals directly to the council. Regional matters should stay in the status quo. Simple, fair, easy and developer-friendly isn't enough, apparently.

F. Board of Education. They should have taken it out of the charter altogether and let it revert to the state, in view of the many cities beyond Los Angeles involved and the absolute incompetency with which the L.A. Unified School District is run. Alternatively, hire the best and the brightest to run it, pay the board members a decent wage so that a higher caliber of candidate might consider running, and get these kids properly educated with fundamental methodology enhanced by 21st-century technology rather than driven by it. Instead, these commissions have proposed no reforms of consequence.

G. Pensions and retirement. Just where is the reform of this troubled system? The commissioners punted on this entirely because it was considered too much of a hot potato.

There are many other charter issues worthy of comment, but these were key errors on which both commissions have not only missed the boat but also the ocean on which it's designed to float. They've spent two years and accomplished very little, other than advancing a few of their personal agendas. Their legacy is more of the same political pap.

No wonder the Valley and other areas of Los Angeles want to secede. It's likely to be the only way that meaningful reform in the form of real local empowerment will ever occur. The Charter Reform Commissions certainly haven't provided it.