TRAGEDY OF CHARTER REFORM: ALL THE CITY'S A STAGE.

Byline: H. Eric Schockman

MENTION charter reform and people's eyes begin to glaze over. It is a heady matter and a task rather obtuse and esoteric to people's daily lives. It asks of us to think big and beyond ourselves, and on behalf of generations yet unborn.

Charters are typically conceived as instruments of the people to direct the form of their city government. Charters should be social contracts between the municipal rulers and those who are ruled. Although their main purpose is to provide restrictions on government, their powers should not divest communities of access and participation in all aspects of municipal affairs.

If the city is a democratic institution and the charter is an oracle for governing, the 1925 City Charter stands in stark contrast in translating the needs of diverse neighborhoods and communities into meaningful and vital political ends. The focus on the structure of governance as personified by the charter is critical in seeking solutions on how public policy competition will be resolved in the future.

Over its 71-year lifetime, the City Charter has become calcified through the centralizing of political power and administrative authority within the confines of City Hall - at the expense of neighborhood or community empowerment.

Radical surgery was long overdue and its need is evidenced by the various overhaul attempts during the past 20 years.

A recent ``critical mass'' came together, not as some volcanic groundswell of the discontented masses, but as a crass, manipulated political strategy driven by electoral politics and jaded political consultants. The intrigue and clandestine affairs that have evolved over the battles these past six months in Los Angeles' charter reform efforts is all about maniacal self-interest for re-election purposes dressed up as a Trojan horse of ``good and efficient government.''

Efforts reformatted as Paula Boland, fresh from her pyretic victory to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District, and needing a highly visible campaign theme for her senate race, stumbled upon the latent San Fernando Valley sentiments for secession.

The Boland secession bill failed, she got the necessary ``political bump'' for her own senatorial aspirations, and Valley leaders got hope again for their Confederate struggle toward secession.

Leaders in the effort of the San Fernando Valley to secede from the city of Los Angeles saw charter reform as a strategic fallback position only after the failure of the Paula Boland secession bill in the state Legislature. Reasons for initiating this political divorce were as varied as the players involved: for the right of self-determination; for the pre-eminence of localism in getting the fair share of city services; for the historical aversion to ``big government.'' If separation was not possible, then reformation must be.

The problem, alas, of the Valley players has been to make charter reform a sideshow, a subplot to the aspirations of full secession. Rather than proceeding on parallel tracks, rather than building a genuine grass-roots movement with an educated constituency primed on the nuances of charter revisions, it has squandered precious moral capital in orchestrating a palace coup.

As an afterthought, Valley leaders failed to place into formation the nuts and bolts of action politics needed for social change. And in treating charter reform as a sideshow they have become manipulable political fodder for others' political and electoral agenda.

The drama cannot be complete without the roles played by the City Council and Mayor. On this municipal stage, the council has all the power. It makes all the rules, and answers only to itself. If this is the status quo script, how do we work to collectively rewrite a new one?

Back in June, Councilman Michael Feuer got five of his colleagues to sign on to a motion to create an ``Independent Citizens' Charter Reform Commission for the 21st Century.''

Knowing the council's obsession to hold onto its power, the motion would have permitted a 21-member commission - one appointed by each council member; six appointed by the mayor from diverse areas of the city. The commission would have been given three years to complete its work, hold public hearings throughout the city (thereby building a natural constituency for charter reform) and then put its complete recommendations directly on the ballot without revisions by the City Council. It would ``sell'' charter reform to the public much like we did with police reforms under Proposition F.

A new script could have been rewritten had we stayed the course. Eight votes could have been secured to move this legislation. Alas, the Macbethian overlay was already set in motion.

David Fleming, an appointed city fire commissioner (and an earlier facilitator in sculpturing the Feuer effort), bolted with an independent effort to start an initiative drive to allow ``the people'' the right to put an elected citizens' commission directly on the ballot.

Fleming went to Mayor Richard Riordan and secured his deep-pocket commitment to put in $800,000 of his own funds to make the initiative drive real and offer his own slate of candidates.

Interestingly, after 3-1/2 years in power and a long honeymoon with the voters and the City Council in which a rational, cogent strategy could have been fashioned on charter reform, the mayor suddenly has awakened.

The mayor's electoral strategy for his 1997 campaign has now been designed to play out as ``Riordan vs. City Council,'' using charter reform as the foil to slay his political demons. This initiative needs 197,336 signatures by October 30. He already has 100,000 signatures on hand. It's all part of his game plan to share some of downtown's power to keep the Valley happy and to secure his base of electoral support which has been slipping over the years.

And just to make sure the Westside or other sections of the city do not react negatively to this covert pandering, the mayor's initiative also guarantees his control over the conclusion: hand-picking his own slate of candidates to write a new charter. It's pretty slick to have this ``citizens' initiative'' on the same ballot at the same time voters will select the next mayor.

Other council members, smelling blood, have jumped into the act. One may indeed venture to speculate that the municipal unions, sensing a potential rupture in the monopoly they hold under the current City Charter, were behind the scenes pulling the strings of the new converts to this issue on the council.

So we now have two efforts, each claiming to represent the hard-working, honest, tax-paying people and not the special interests of this city. The council will move along with a 21-member ``advisory'' panel (decisions on what goes on the ballot remains in the council's hands), and the mayor's citizen initiative should have no trouble qualifying.

Money and elections can't buy you love, but they can dictate control over the municipal balance of power.

Can we be convinced that it is ethically right for politicians to use the legislative/initiative process to feather their own beds? Or is it right for a wealthy mayor to ``purchase'' first his initial race and later fund an initiative that will guarantee his re-election? Or is it correct to allow the imperial City Council to have the final say in removing some of the dominant power they must share with the mayor and the city's neighborhoods?

The recent examples from cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York have shown that only a singular, unified, concerted effort will eventually pass charter reform. We need to place our own house in order. Two independent forces working alone will not achieve charter reform.

MEMO: H. Eric Schockman, Ph.D., is a political scientist and associate director of the Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies at the University of Southern California. He is co-editor of a newly published book: ``Rethinking Los Angeles'' (Sage Publications).