L.A. COUNCIL HAS HISTORY OF STIFLING CHARTER REFORM.

Byline: James W. Ingram III

THERE has been a lot of discussion of late about reforming the Los Angeles charter. The real issue before Los Angeles voters today is not whether to reform the charter, but how.

The Charter Reform Initiative (Proposition 8), if passed, will create an elected charter reform commission composed of 15 local citizens representing each of the 15 City Council districts. The commission would be empowered to present charter reform recommendations directly to the voters on a future ballot. Under state law, no one can alter, water down or omit any part of the commission's recommendations.

If voters approved the recommendations, the charter would be changed. If they rejected the recommendations, the charter wouldn't be changed.

Charter reform has had a colorful history in Los Angeles. Through the years, both council-appointed commissions and elected commissions have served to review and revise our charter.

The story begins in 1902, with a philanthropist named John Randolph Haynes, who had been elected to two prior charter reform commissions. Though Haynes was well-qualified to be a charter commissioner, the City Council kept him off a commission it appointed because it knew he favored giving the city's voters the right to take matters into their own hands - known as ``direct democracy.''

Specifically, Haynes sought to give the people the power to pass laws by initiative petition, to repeal laws by referendum and to recall elected officials while in office - all very radical ideas at that time.

Though Haynes was denied a seat on the commission, he set out to make political allies. He invited the members to dinner at the best restaurant in town. After they had finished a magnificent meal, he introduced them to an eloquent speaker who told them about the promise of direct democracy. They held a commission meeting right at the restaurant and agreed to make direct democracy one of their charter revisions.

The City Council, seeing that charter amendments had consistently failed at the polls in 1895, 1897 and 1898, let the amendments slide onto the 1902 ballot. Before the election, they realized how popular these reforms were with voters, so they tried to sabotage them by calling in attorneys to argue that the amendments were unconstitutional.

The voters saw through this attempt by the council to preserve its own power and adopted the recommended reforms in 1902, making Los Angeles the first city in the country with direct democracy.

Indeed, historically most of Los Angeles' subsequent reforms have come from direct democracy and the elected charter commissions. In fact, both of the charters that Los Angeles has given itself since it had the power to write its own local constitution - the original 1889 and the current 1925 charter - have come from elected commissions.

Appointed charter revision commissions have recommended various reforms over and over since 1902, but thoroughgoing reforms time and again - in 1906, 1909, 1911 and 1913, for example - had to be forced on the council through the explicit threat or actual use of direct democracy.

Conversely, when the council has had the opportunity to evaluate recommended reforms before presenting them to the voters, it has consistently acted to protect the status quo.

For example, in 1934, 1941 and 1970-71, the City Council gutted proposals embodying significant reform, opting instead to present only comparatively minor revisions. In each instance, the result was either more cosmetic change or outright failure at real reform.

Consistently over the years, the council's own revision commissions have had to go over the heads of the councils and appeal to the voters directly in order to force the council to submit their recommendations to the public.

An appointed commission could be a collection of the best people in the world, but only the council has the final word on whether their work goes to the voters. So changes are filtered through an institution that naturally has its own interests at heart. An elected commission gets to present its work directly to the voters for approval.

The history of Los Angeles charter reform is unequivocal: Real reform comes only through direct democracy and elected charter commissions. For the first time in more than 170 years, Proposition 8 offers voters empowerment and real reform.