In standing up in public and denouncing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as irrelevant and calling out the corruption at City Hall that leaves Los Angeles teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Dick Riordan has assumed a role that no other prominent person has shown the courage to take on.
He has heard the cry of the people and is speaking in their voice. It is the voice City Hall has ignored for a long time but they can’t ignore Riordan. So they attack him with all the artillery at their disposal to prevent him from becoming a rallying point for public anger and discontent.
They accuse him when he was mayor of making many of the same mistakes as they are making today, of giving into the blackmail of city unions and too often doing city business for the benefit of special interests. And so they ask, what right does he have to criticize?
They never mentioned any of these criticisms until now because they don’t see anything wrong with what they accuse Riordan of doing.
There is a big difference, though. Riordan does think it’s wrong and he thought it was wrong then. But he couldn’t see any other way to get anything done. He thought he was being pragmatic, a good leader and businessman, cutting the best deals he could for the good of his city.
He was wrong about that and I told him so many times over many years, in public and private. There is no other person over the last four decades who has done more than Dick Riordan to try to fix the schools and city government, no one who has tried to reinvent a civic leadership that could see beyond its own selfish interests.
As mayor, Dick Riordan did turn LA around as he promised. He just couldn’t get it moving because the entrenched interests were too strong and he is too much of an elitist to rally the public behind him.
He believes now as then that the best and the brightest should be in charge as they are in successful business enterprises where you pay people to work for you and to obey your orders, rewarding them when they show imagination and achieve goals.
It’s not that way in public life.
Those same people don’t have to take orders from the best and brightest or anybody else for that matter because they’re the ones paying the bills, the salaries, the subsidies.
What the civic, cultural, economic and political elite — such as they are — don’t understand is that they are the leaders, the best and the brightest by one measure or another, but they are just hirelings. The people are the owners, the bosses and nothing good can be achieved without bringing them to the table of power and mobilizing them in support of policies that make a city great, that respects and balances the competing interests.
Just the other day, Riordan admitted he never understood the Valley and still doesn’t even though it was the Valley that elected him mayor and loved him dearly. “The Valley feels cheated by the city constantly… The
Valley, it’s an enigma to me,” he told Patt Morrison last week.
The Valley, I’m talking about, is the middle-class and working-class people who own homes or are saving to buy one, who go to work every day no matter how much crap they have to take, who hold their marriages together if they possibly can, and believe that owning a piece of the rock entitles them to expect that their government will serve their interests.
It took me a while to figure out when I came to the Valley. But it’s really simple. What the Valley wants, what most people want, is nothing more than respect for their values and interests.
What City Hall has been doing for too long is treating people with contempt. It has reached such unprecedented levels that a grassroots rebellion has sprung up and gained strength.
And for the first time a civic leader has stepped forward and spoken out against what is going on at City Hall, called out the city’s leadership for their failures and warned that bankruptcy for the city is inevitable unless there is a radical shift in direction now.
This is exactly what thousands of people all over of the city have been saying for a long time and mostly getting little more than lip service from our elected officials who have spent nearly all their time and efforts preserving a failed system that serves only insiders and special interests.
After years of warnings, after a year of almost daily debate, they have sent pink slips to barely 100 workers out of the 52,000 on the city payroll, handsomely paid off 2,400 others to retire in their mid-50s, given raises to overpaid DWP workers and padded the utility’s payroll with dozens of transferred workers who got raises of up 50 percent.
They are now in the process of slashing basic services to the public, closing libraries two days a week, shutting down parks programs, protecting jobs in planning and building code enforcement to benefit developers at the expense of the services that preserve the quality of life in our neighborhoods. They are abdicating their responsibility to fix potholes, trim trees and repair sidewalks.
They have ignored the rising public groundswell. But they cannot ignore Dick Riordan. His voice carries too much weight with too many. So they attack him with specious arguments that have nothing to do with today’s crisis.
We don’t have to agree with everything Riordan believes anymore than we have to agree with each other on everything.
What matters now is we all agree on cleaning up City Hall. Riordan’s fight with City Hall is our fight. I believe this is the moment when we show we can all get along and work together for the common good.
And yet, you don’t hear noble Dick decrying the hundreds of millions of tax dollars per year spent on “corporate welfare” through the CRA for his fellow developers, do you?
DICK Riordan and allegedly pushing for the “best and the brightest” to be running the City’s government?
That’s a rich joke.
Soon as Riordan came in, he eliminated the Department of Telecommunications–headed by nationally recognized City employees–by folding that department into ITA.
ITA has often displayed a total contempt for many of the duties that it inherited from the Department of Telecommunications.
Such duties include running Channel 35, properly administering cable television franchises–subsequently transferred to State jurisdiction thanks to that disgrace to government Fabian Nunez–and protecting the consumer rights of the City’s cable television customers.
ITA contempt for its duties to City residents has been manifested by hiring people unqualified for their positions–such as current Telecommunications Regulatory Officer William Imperial–who had no cable regulatory experience before being hired by ITA and had resigned from the California Bar after being disciplined repeatedly by the Bar.
Not surprisingly, Imperial has performed very poorly as a Telecommunications Regulatory Officer.
Perhaps Imperial or his boss, ITA Executive Officer Mark Wolf would like to explain why ITA not longer will assist City cable television customers who have complaints about their cable television service–despite the fact that the City collects over $20 million annually in cable television franchise fees.
This is a road that we may not have travelled had DICK Riordan truly promoted the idea of having the “best and brightest” serve City residents.
I’ve never met Riordan, but I’d vote for him today even if he was only working one day a week: he’d be light years better than the sandbox politicians we have now. (Including you, Mr. Mayor That Ruined Los Angeles).
He did push the LAUSD in a totally unfamiliar direction-toward responsibility for their students–the first time anyone did in decades.
While the LA Times ran PR photos of that failed hack Ruben Zacirias, or worried if they had enough diversity op eds, Rioran actually tried to install new blood–smart responsible people-on the Board. He didn’t need to: he has no kids in LAUSD. he did it as a responsible man, a good public servant.
A whole generation of kids owes him as do all of us who will live with those kids. He said a good LAUSD was an achievable dream–we didn’t have to sit like the audience in that 1984 Imac commercial, listening to the Union hacks tell us how much more we had to spend to have custodians clean a hallway once a year during their breaks.
Riordan may be a bit too close to the corporate boys, but the city was run better, cleaner, cheaper when he was in charge. He didn’t have to endure the abuse: he could have sat in Brentwood or chilled at the California club. Or he could have had endless photo sessions like our current mayor, who doubtless desperately hopes he’ll be appointed to a federal job before everything else blows up on his watch.
I admire Riordan for speaking up now, and pointing to what seems obvious: LA has dug itself such a deep hole it’ll never get out without it (unless the taxes just go to pensions).
If the LA Times had half his courage, they’d move budget items to the front page and do a pie chart of the real budget with a line item analysis and keep on it. But no: we’ll get more pieces on kingdoms run by women or the frigging MOCA.
Certainly the inert people at the Public relations recycling office–I mean the LA Times–never pushed for the type of necessay changes Riordan has tried to implement. If it was up to Skelton and Rainey, we’d just be talking about how Detroit isn’t so bad, no one uses libraries anyway and high union pensions are everyone’s obligation to fund, even those without pensions.
What mystifies me is the absence of any younger Riordan replacement: is there no one in the local business world who cares enough to run for mayor? Is the threat of being investigated and prosecuted so serious that no one wants to? That mystifies me: the lack of men or women who will step up. But I suppose losing the old manufacturing base cost us people with real feelings about their city as well. Riordan may be the last person that actually cares about LA we’ll ever see in a top spot.
You highlight how Riordan admits he never understood the valley which helped elect him, and still doesn’t – then in the next breath, repeat over and over that “his fight is our fight,” how he represents the very people he proclaims he doesn’t understand, the middle class who – as you describe them – go to work every day even if they hate their jobs, hold together their marriages even if they’re miserable, and believe that owning a home entitles them to certain social services, “a piece of the rock.”
Sorry but that’s more of your inconsistency.
Not to mention that, as 1:13 says, he represents the very mega-rich billionaire developers you condemn all the time, and condemn any city official for even acknowledging or accepting any money from – he, Broad and their ilk are wonderful, even as they benefit from the CRA and $1 land deals, while they admit having no clue about the valley/ middle class working stiffs YOU claim to represent.
You represent militant homeowner groups on the westside whose heads, like Mike Eveloff, want NO/ literally ZERO development, of any kind, and have said so and even written it in their own words in LA CityWatch – but demand more cops, no taxes and more services.
And what about the fact that even if Riordan is right, his proclaiming this far and wide starting to the Wall Street Journal, has already hurt LA’s credit rating and HENCE made it more expensive to borrow money AND put even greater burdens on the backs of the valley/ middle class.
(AND incidentally, the valley has NO smug claim to the “middle class” even though you equate “valley” and “middle class” as synonymous here.
Not only is the valley also heavily Latino and working class (guess you only mean West Valley), but “middle class” homeowners are also in Silver Lake and Echo Park, to the Hollywood Hills and flats of Carthay Circle and Cheviott Hills, to the expensive homes and highly-taxed (unless they’re long-term owners, like most of the active HOA members who want no development and pay little taxes are) mansions of the western Hollywood Hills, Bel Air and Palisades…
They’re the ones with the most valid and loudest beef about paying a lot more for a lot less than their neighbors in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, or Santa Monica. WHERE not coincidentally, it doesn’t occur to them however, that all those cities have more favorable climates to do business in (Beverly Hills being the one where it’s harder to develop property, but their tiny size, few low-rent areas and lots of high-rent retail make up for it). You Valley secessionists- martyr complex types ALONG WITH other militant, isolationist HOA groups across the city, are in fact at polar OPPOSITES to the thinking of a Dick Riordan or Braod. At least HE knows that.
It sure is refreshing to see Dick out there campaigning to help make our city better. You should invite him to a SLAP or CleanSweepLA or Reform LA meeting. He sounds as frustrated as we all are at the failures of city hall and corruption of pretending. One thing I will say about Riordan is he loves this city. Too bad we can’t say that about the Mayor. Today the Failure of a Mayor had a second press conf. on the same gun buy back lying saying it was the largest. Insiders are saying he’s lying but needs more positive photo ops. LA Slimes has dropped 14%. They refused to report the story of DA Public Integrity investigating city council for DWP vote early on. They are a pr tool for the Mayor. I dont’ see them around much longer.
First I want to echo the comments by Walter Moore regarding the CRA: http://redevelopment.com/norby/toc.htm
Also I will join in the chorus against the lack of action taken by our current Mayor, but I would exercise caution on Riordan and his cronies – Wall Street Takeover artists who want to buy off City-owned assets on the cheap and take all the Corporate bailouts they can get.
You also need to question Riordan’s credibility – as reported in the Times, he upped the Firefighters pension from 70% to 90%.
Just look at the newly appointed General Manager at DWP, a member of the Billionaire Club.
Yes we need to cut (and should have cut early). Yes we need to address pension plans, but don’t give away the keys to the City and don’t give out sweetheart consulting contracts to wealthy contributors – the well connected friends of the Mayor while the working class taxpayer and small businesses foot the bill for this playground of the rich.
G. Will in the May 17, 2010, NEWSWEEK issue compares L.A. to Greece. ” Trickle-Down Misery in L.A.” Riordan is not the only person who sees catastrophy.
To May 10, 2010 2:35 PM,
I have no idea where you are coming from – you make a lot of assumptions and you sound like the YIMBY crowed.
I am a renter who lives in an apartment (multi-family), but I have heard foolish talk about “endless growth” and no height limit high-density.
This doesn’t represent good planning, its represents a cross between “dead reckoning” and “putting the cart before the horse.” Fix the infrastructure first and realize that Southern California is a desert with chronic drought conditions – where sustainable slow growth is good for both the economy and for land use planning.
Implement high efficiency green building standards, but don’t take several steps backwards by dramatically increasing density that defeats any energy or water saving requirements.
Finally enough bailouts – I think we have seen the sins of the Federal Bailouts of Goldman Sachs – If its “too big to fail” bring in the trust busters and break it up. Or be a true Capitalist and let them fail – otherwise you have corporate welfare.
Let`s see Mayor Failure/Irrelevant take on G. Will and broadcast to the World his, well, FAILURE!
A couple of thoughts on James McCuen’s comment:
As I understand it, Riordan pushed through a tier 5 pension formula that allowed PD and FD to retire after 30 or 33 years of service. It added around 10 million or so to the 1 billion dollar mess we see with city pensions. For Council and the mayor to hone in on that is a red herring given AV’s vote on SB 400 that added billions to the State’s pension crises, Council’s pension payback vote and DWP raises, etc.
As Riordan said (paraphrase)in a television interview, there’s plenty of blame to go around. The question is, who’s going to do something to fix it. I see so many here that have echoed Riordan’s message in the past. But, because folks take issue with the messenger, the message seems lost. If we wait to agree on everything (or, if we don’t like the messenger), we’ll get nowhere. Why can’t we just agree that Riordan’s right in this one arena?
As I recall, the Fitch rating downgrade was related to the pensions, amongst other things, and that happened before Riordan had the increased media attention. He did bring up this problem five years ago. It fell on deaf ears. I credit him for the insight and am glad he’s calling our city leaders on it.
I do have concerns about Beutner and other Riordanisms. But, I would hope that we can all agree with the main message–that City Hall better do something about this pension mess. Cutting services to avoid the elephant in the living room is a disservice to the employees and the residents.
I agree with a few comments here. I think that Ron is using Reirdon to support his dislike of the mayor, knowing full well, or maybe ignorant of all the other facts.
Corporate welfare, human welfare, welfare welfare welfare…all on the backs of the middle class.
Some things never change.
Riordan is what has ruined the City. His so called reforms allowed the General Managers to be political appointments who had to follow the polictical winds. We now have managers in power who have no knowledge of the departments they run but have to answer to the Mayor. So instead of having people who try to make sure the City last 100 years they only care about the next election. This is just like the businesses who only are concerned with the next quarter profits. The ex head of the CRA one of the most dirty and biased departments in the City is now the head of Building and Safety and thinks providing for public safety and obtianing public input is troublesome. Following the mayor’s orders are not what the city employees should be judged on but they are. Riordan’s attitude of “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permision” is a major part of the problem that continues today. It is management’s fault for not either laying off people as they are allowed or doing their job and having the rules they complain about changed. Why is it there is always money to remodel their offices but not to paid the employees who do the work. The City is not honoring its contracts but will again spend on remodeling to make things look good for when the meet the latest millionier they want to give our money too.
If Riordan hadn’t changed the charter to give the mayor sole authority to appoint and fire almost every leadership position in LA City government, things would be better right now.
We wouldn’t have puppet GM’s who get sacked when they don’t listen to the mayor. We might actually have had GM’s do some leading for once instead of going along with the mayor out of fear of losing their job or to curry favor for their next promotion.
9 DWP GM’s in 10 years? Police Chiefs who are politician cops instead of cop’s cops? All Riordan’s fault. He’s got zero credibility