Yaroslavsky Wants Insurance, Fears District Not in Good Hands

A TEMP NEEDED: Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky recently floated the idea of a caretaker council member being temporarily appointed to replace him when he steps down from his post to become a member of the County Board of Supervisors.

With a permanent, elected replacement probably not taking office until June at the earliest, the 5th District could be devoid of representation at City Hall for seven months.

That’s too risky, Yaroslavsky and others have argued.

But some, including council President John Ferraro, have pooh-poohed the caretaker idea, insisting that 5th District constituents can rest easy in the expectation that their interests would be well protected by the council’s other members.

Some people believe that’s a fairy tale. Witness, for example, the maneuvering last week of council member Mark Ridley-Thomas.

The issue was how to allocate $47 million in housing rehabilitation funds. A council committee had voted 2 to 1 in favor of a plan to provide $23 million for earthquake repairs (read: money for the Valley). However, committee chairman Ridley-Thomas, who represents South-Central Los Angeles, supported a plan to drop the earthquake allocation to $14.7 million.

It should be noted that the scheduling of full council votes on committee reports is decided by the committee chair--in this case, Ridley-Thomas--in consultation with Ferraro, the president.

With three San Fernando Valley lawmakers out of town, it was decided last week that the council would take up the allocation issue. The result: the Ridley-Thomas formula was adopted.

Although there has been a move to reconsider the vote, there continues to be a great gnashing of teeth in the Valley.

Particularly loud complaints came from Yaroslavsky, who presides over a district that includes quake-ravaged Sherman Oaks. A sneak attack, Yaroslavsky said by phone from British Columbia, Canada, where he was vacationing when the key vote went down.

Still, some saw a silver lining. “That vote was the best advertising we could get for the need for a temporary council member,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. “It’s a perfect example of how the district can be hurt when it has no vote.”

What mischief might occur, Close wonders, should the 5th District remain leaderless for seven months?

MYSTERY COMMITTEE: GOP congressional candidate Gary Forsch doesn’t know. It’s an enigma to Jeff Pick. And U.S. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) hasn’t got a clue.

The mystery is who was behind a political committee called Democrats for Gary Forsch. This committee produced at least one piece of political mail for Forsch that went out in 1992, when the Sun Valley hardware store owner first ran against Berman.

But a recent check with the Federal Elections Committee unearthed no evidence that Democrats for Gary Forsch existed, much less ever filed a disclosure statement detailing its officers, contributors and expenditures.

This mystery group, it is assumed, was an independent expenditure committee. Such committees enjoy wide fiscal latitude. Notably, individual contributors to such committees can give as much as $5,000 to their candidates. By contrast, $1,000 is the maximum an individual can donate directly to a congressional candidate’s campaign finance committee.

Asked about the group’s origins recently, Forsch said it was his understanding that Jeff Pick, a friend of his and the owner of a Northridge print shop, was head of the committee. But Pick subsequently denied this. Though he is a Democrat who supports Forsch, he is unable to shed light on the mystery, Pick said.

Will this committee surface again as Forsch runs against Berman again? “I hope so,” Forsch laughed.

QUAKE FALLOUT: City Controller Rick Tuttle clearly touched a nerve with Mayor Richard Riordan recently when he began to question whether the mayor was doing enough to help business recover from quake damage.

Tuttle pointed out that a disaster recovery plan signed by Riordan five days after the quake called for him to set up a hot line for aid and deploy business assistance teams to help proprietors get back on their feet.

But as of six months after the quake, no such teams had been assembled, Tuttle noted.

When Riordan heard that the press had picked up on Tuttle’s charges, he called Tuttle into his office for a verbal caning, according to City Hall insiders. The mayor’s aides then announced that the hot line and the assistance teams would be in place by September.

But Riordan’s people did not stop there. Apparently determined to squelch any suggestion that Riordan had lost interest in the quake recovery, the mayor’s staff led a full-court press to get the word out that he is committed to leading the rebuilding effort.

In the month since Tuttle leveled his criticism, Riordan has announced he would hire an ombudsman to coordinate the city’s efforts and has called three news conferences to promote new funding programs for quake victims.

PROMISES TO KEEP: “Slush funds . . . nothing more than legalized laundering of money raised from special interests.” That’s what Laura Chick had to say about so-called officeholder committees in the spring of 1993 as she ran for the Los Angeles City Council against incumbent Joy Picus.

“Eliminate car telephones for council staff,” Chick said in the same six-point program for slashing council members’ perks that she issued in the heat of the campaign.

So how has Chick performed on her program of fiscal reform and self-denial?

One of Chick’s pledges was to reduce the use of city-owned cars by 3rd District council staff; another was she would refuse to accept the use of a luxury car if elected.

In fact, city officials confirm that Chick’s office has only four city cars assigned to it, although each council office is authorized to receive seven. And Chick herself drives her own car.

Chick also pledged to slash 3rd District council staff by 25% and end pension benefits for future lawmakers (the job, she said, should not be a full-time, lifelong career).

Karen Constine, Chick’s chief deputy, said the 3rd District office now has two fewer staff members than it did under Picus. As for the pension pledge, it was taken care of by 1993’s measure that holds council members to two four-year terms. It takes 10 years of service at City Hall to be vested in a pension.

As for those “slush funds” and car phones?

That’s another story. In fact, Chick has set up her own officeholder committee account. But Constine said Chick established it to offset cutbacks in her taxpayer-financed office budget that threatened to erode her ability to serve her constituents. Many council members use the funds to pay for constituency ingratiation like buying plaques to award citizen crime fighters, graffiti busters and the like.

Finally, Chick and two of her staff now have cellular phones, the maximum allowed under council policy, according to Frank Martinez, a top official in the city’s Department of General Services.

“Early on, Councilwoman Chick realized that having the phones would be a time saver for her staff, and during the earthquake they proved to be a lifesaver,” Constine said.