Reforming Charter Raises Racial Issues

Adequate representation for ethnic minorities is an unspoken but potentially volatile issue in the fight over reshaping Los Angeles government.

On the surface, the scrap sounds like politics as usual. On one side is Mayor Richard Riordan, putting his political and financial power behind an April ballot measure that would strengthen the office of mayor. (It would take effect after he leaves office.) On the other side is the City Council, accusing Riordan of a power grab.

But the fight is also intertwined with the long effort by racial minorities to gain representation in City Hall. This helps explain why feelings are so intense over rewriting, or reforming, the City Charter.

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The 15 Los Angeles City Council members have tremendous power over matters big and small, from setting your water rates to deciding on the design of street lights in front of your house. The mayor has power, too. He writes the budget, can veto council-passed legislation and appoints commissioners who supervise the Police Department and other important city agencies. But without council support, he’s pretty much stymied.

This system was conceived in the 1920s, when the city was predominantly white. The Latino and African American population grew over the years, but City Hall, dominated by a few rich downtown businessmen, divided minority neighborhoods in a way that made it difficult, if not impossible, for them to elect one of their own to the council.

Occasionally, the color line was broken but it took the federal Voting Rights Act, first passed in the mid-’60s, to force a reapportionment that resulted in the election of a substantial number of minority council members. Today, there are three Latinos--Richard Alatorre, Richard Alarcon and Mike Hernandez--and three African Americans, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Rita Walters and Nate Holden.

Without such council representation, minorities would have little real political power. For although Latinos, African Americans and Asians comprise the majority in Los Angeles, they are a minority of the citywide electorate. In the 1993 mayoral election, 72% of the electorate was white.

Thus whites, to a great extent, elect the mayor and other citywide offices. But that’s not the case in council districts drawn to meet Voting Rights Act requirements of promoting minority representation. There, large blocs of minorities elect their own.

To understand what this means, take a look at what’s been happening with major league baseball and football here.

Back in the late ‘50s, when Peter O’Malley’s father, Walter, wanted to build Dodger Stadium on land that had been designated for low-cost housing in a Latino community, the proposal cleared a white-run City Hall and was approved by the voters. Today, almost 40 years later, the Chavez Ravine story still burns in the memories of many Latinos.

Last year, Peter O’Malley, backed by Riordan, proposed a stadium for a National Football League team on the Dodger Stadium property. But, unlike his dad, he was up against a post-Voting Rights Act City Hall with its strong Latino and African American delegations.

Councilman Hernandez, declaring that congestion would hurt his Latino constituents near Chavez Ravine, opposed O’Malley. So did Councilman Ridley-Thomas, who wants the NFL to play in the Memorial Coliseum to help his own district, which is largely African American and Latino. Faced with the opposition of Ridley-Thomas, Hernandez and their allies, O’Malley dropped his expansion plans and now has his baseball team up for sale.

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Minority leaders fear that Riordan’s proposal, on the April 8 ballot, to strengthen the mayor’s office and weaken the council, will deprive council members of such hard-won power. A powerful mayor, put in office by a citywide, predominantly white electorate, could push aside minority communities now represented by council members with clout.

Attorney David Fleming, Riordan’s point man on charter reform, says this won’t happen. But L.A. history is too powerful to be forgotten. Expect the issue of minority representation, now an undercurrent, to move to the surface as the election campaign progresses.