More Firing Power Sought for Mayor, Council : Bureaucracy: Voters have rejected six earlier ballot measures to curb Civil Service. But proponents believe charter reform is possible in era of term limits.

For the seventh time in a quarter-century, Los Angeles voters are likely to be presented next spring with the opportunity to give more power to the mayor and City Council to hire and fire the city’s top bureaucrats.

The city’s elected leaders, headed by Mayor Richard Riordan, say they need that power to rid City Hall of well-entrenched slackers so they can run government more efficiently.

Despite voter rejection of similar proposals six times since 1970, City Council members Marvin Braude and Mark Ridley-Thomas announced Wednesday that they will attempt to put the City Charter reform on the ballot in April, 1995.

Braude said he believes the measure’s chances for passage may be better now than in the past because it would give much of the new power over the bureaucracy to Riordan, a popular figure whose business background may give voters more confidence that they are putting managerial authority in the right hands.

Riordan has often said that he would like to run the city more like the corporations he helped manage before taking office. But he has complained that 56-year-old rules in the City Charter--put in place to root out cronyism and patronage--prevented him from wielding more authority.

“For Mayor Riordan to be successful in his efforts to streamline and improve city government, he needs to have this kind of tool to make city managers accountable for the operation of their departments,” Braude said.

“General mangers who are unresponsive to the needs of the people, unable to manage efficiently or are just mediocre know their jobs are safe since it is virtually impossible to remove them.”

Riordan said in a letter this month that Civil Service rules “undermine accountability and organizational efficiency.” He added that he would support a charter amendment, which must be approved by voters, to “end this managerial straitjacket.”

Through a spokeswoman, Riordan said Wednesday that he would wait to see whether the details of the Braude proposal fill that bill. If they do, he may lend his considerable popularity to a campaign for the measure, he said. Braude also pledged to form a private organization to lead a campaign.

Although the proposal has not yet been drafted, it would presumably give both the mayor and a majority of eight council members the power to remove department heads. Braude and Ridley-Thomas said they believe current top bureaucrats would have to be exempted from the law because they were hired with Civil Service protections. But Riordan has raised the possibility that incumbent officials could be subject to the charter change.

In any event, the officials who want the change will have to do a better sales job than in the past. Previous attempts at removing Civil Service protections from department heads have won between 44.8% and 48.2% of the vote, with the low ebb coming in the 1993 municipal election.

Nonetheless, Braude and Ridley-Thomas said they are optimistic because voters recently approved a charter change that limits the police chief to two five-year terms and permits the chief to be removed without cause.

With elected officials now limited by voters to two four-year terms, Ridley-Thomas said it does not make sense to leave in place an embedded bureaucratic class. “There wasn’t the sympathy before to move out government officials, but now there is. We are trying to take that to its logical conclusion,” the councilman said.