112 Compete for 15 Seats on City Charter Reform Panel

Two former assemblywomen, a teachers union leader, a noted law professor and dozens of community activists are among the 112 candidates who filed by Monday’s deadline to run for a City Charter reform panel.

Most of the candidates live in the San Fernando Valley, where a threatened secession prompted Mayor Richard Riordan to launch an initiative effort to create a panel that would overhaul the city’s aging governing charter.

But the reform effort has become the center of a political feud between the mayor and a majority of the City Council, which has created a separate appointed panel that has begun studying ways of overhauling the 72-year-old charter.

Among the candidates for the elected panel are: Paula Boland, former assemblywoman from Granada Hills who unsuccessfully championed a bill to make a Valley secession easier; Marguerite Archie-Hudson, former assemblywoman who is a member of the competing charter panel created by the council; Erwin Chemerinsky, a USC law professor; Janice Hahn, a businesswoman and sister of City Atty. James K. Hahn, and Helen Bernstein, the former president of United Teachers-Los Angeles and a top Riordan advisor on education.

City officials say the high number of candidates vying for 15 positions indicates a strong interest in reforming the charter.

To appear on the ballot, candidates must still collect up to 1,000 signatures of registered voters on a nominating petition or pay a $300 fee and collect only 500 signatures.