GOVERNING THE UNGOVERNABLE : POLITICAL CULTURE IN L.A. SOWS MENTALITY IN WHICH LOCALS DON'T EXPECT LEADERSHIP.

Byline: H. Eric Schockman

THE calculus of municipal governance is both obtuse and complex. The average Los Angeleno no doubt ponders much, in the idle commute time leaving the Valley on the 405 or 101. Pondering city government is probably not high on anyone's agenda in this game of mental gymnastics.

Probably what we collectively do intuit is more grounded in reality than what we think. Public opinion polling and voting patterns have continued to register this collective angst, that something is wrong with the byproducts of public policies and the delivery of municipal services that we expect from our investment in local government.

Every city is said to have its own unique political culture. Chicago has the Daleys, San Francisco's political culture is defined in its mass of ``hyperpluralistic'' grass-roots entities all colliding with each other in the public domain.

And then there is the political culture of Los Angeles, which is not much more than the famous one-liner sniped by Woody Allen in his definition of culture in L.A.: making a right-hand turn on a red light.

In Los Angeles, we have convoluted the Jeffersonian idea of governance and entrapped it in our civic culture, to writ: ``That government is best, which governs not at all.''

L.A. ruled, seldom governed

The bottom line is: Los Angeles has never been governable, it has only been administered. Administrators may rule but they seldom govern.

The administrative state of municipal Los Angeles has honed its skill over the decades with the abdication of the leadership throne in a blind faith to professional administrators.

The political culture has only reinforced this scenario: local television that rarely covers policy issues or educates the public on municipal politics; local newspapers that have lost their zeal for investigative reporting, meaning that public scandals rarely get exposed; neighborhood associations forged over the decades of unprecedented growth to protect the quality-of-life issues in communities that have not made the transition from a rear-end stance of NIMBYism (not-in-my-back-yard), to a pro-active, politically sophisticated CIVICism (neighborhood empowerment and a buy-in as a stakeholder in the bigger civic order).

We have given up politics to the mindless hope that city administrators can mitigate municipal decay, racial tensions, homelessness and poverty.

Worst still, we have given up on setting the public agenda and we don't expect the public policy outputs stemming from City Hall to even remotely make a difference in one's daily life.

Agenda setting done by administrators always starts from the top and is then sold to the masses as ``good public policy'' and ``government-in-action.''

There are countless examples one could cite but let's just focus on one: banning leaf blowers. Yes, public enemy No. 1 in the city of Los Angeles is leaf blowers - not street gangs, not car jackings, not home invasion robberies.

Fixing the dysfunction

Somehow the public agenda seems out of whack, or in the control of a select few. In this vein, is the nondebate in this city about the fate of a downtown sports arena another example of administrative politics?

Fixing the dysfunctional municipal administrative state will not be an easy task, but urban reformers have laid a smorgasbord of policy options at our feet for us to choose a sample from:

Creation of decentralized boroughs. As early as 1948, Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron proposed dividing the city into five boroughs, which would direct all services, including public safety, and could levy taxes for increased local services over and above that provided on a citywide basis. Is it time to revise this issue?

Secession of the San Fernando Valley from the city. In 1915, 170 square miles of the Valley was annexed into the city by a vote of 681-251. Population at that time was approximately 1,700 and less than 50 percent of the populace voted for original incorporation. The essence of the question should be ``Is the Valley so unique, so underserved, so disproportioned in policy outcomes that the Eastern European model of a breakaway republic would deliver a more governable domain?''

Enactment of charter reform. The current City Charter was passed in 1925 and amended over 1,000 times. Several charter reform efforts have taken place with resultant proposals ranging from reconfiguration of power to permit a ``strong mayor, weak council'' system of government to the formulation of neighborhood organizations with an elected board to influence City Hall decisions.

Will charter reform bring strong leadership or possible municipal corruption?

Dismantling city government by merger into regional government. The efforts toward regional government, set in part by the planning efforts of the Southern California Association of Governments, have proposed the centralization of power in a ``Congress of Souther California Governments'' to address regional issues like air pollution, transportation and waste management. In a political world spinning centrifugal forces is centralization the answer?

Whatever critical mass comes to reformist consensus it must somehow break the lock of administrative mentality that has passed as some form of governing system for the city. Now think about that the next time you're stalled in traffic.