Religious, Civic Leaders Endorse Charter Reform

Wrapping up a final push in which they have reached out to a wide array of constituencies, supporters of reforming the Los Angeles City Charter on Friday completed a clean sweep of the city’s news organizations and won the backing of religious and civic leaders who rarely come together on political issues.

Leaders of some of the city’s largest congregations gathered Friday to say that they favored adoption of the charter, which voters will consider Tuesday.

Among the religious organizations represented at a morning news conference were First African Methodist Episcopal and the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, two of the African American community’s largest and most respected churches; the Roman Catholic Archdiocese and Episcopal Diocese, which together reach across a wide swath of the city; the Southern California Board of Rabbis, the Western Baptist State Convention, the Presbyterian Church of the USA, Hebrew Union College and a religious organization known as the Black Agenda.

Combined, the organizations include hundreds of thousands of members, and leaders of the various groups said they are working to educate their members and to urge them to vote next week.

“Sometimes, the Lord works in mysterious ways,” said Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. “But that’s not how City Hall should work.”

Roy S. Petitt, pastor of Miracle Center Apostolic Church and leader of the Black Agenda, echoed the sentiments of other religious leaders when he said he supported the proposed charter not because it is perfect but because it would bring some improvement.

“It will simplify things,” he said. “It will make it possible for citizens to receive what’s appropriate for them to receive as a citizen of Los Angeles, in services from the city.”

The announcements of support from the religious leaders were accompanied by an endorsement from retired basketball great Earvin “Magic” Johnson and by the charter campaign’s trumpeting of its success among the city’s leading media. On Friday, La Opinion endorsed the proposed charter, joining the Los Angeles Times, the Daily News of Los Angeles, the L.A. Weekly and the Sentinel in supporting the document.

Although charter opponents have received a few endorsements of their own, the consultant who runs their campaign on Friday dismissed the importance of the coalition gathering in support of reform.

“I’ve always thought that individual endorsements are rather presumptuous,” said the consultant, Steven Afriat. “I think the voters who are voting on Tuesday will make up their own minds.”

Afriat’s campaign has been significantly outspent (he estimated that the pro-charter effort will end up spending six times as much as the effort to defeat it), but he expressed confidence that the measure will be beaten despite that. Unions representing police officers and firefighters are opposing the charter, and the anti-charter mailings highlight the concerns expressed by those unions.

“I think the race is too close to call,” Afriat said Friday. “I think it’s within 3 to 4 points either way.”

The anti-charter campaign also has emphasized possible costs associated with the proposed new charter, an area about which there is strong disagreement. Opponents say that if voters approve an enlarged City Council it could end up costing more than $30 million a year. Proposals to expand the council also will appear on Tuesday’s ballot. Additional money would be required to start a network of neighborhood councils and a department to oversee them.

Supporters say that those costs are minimal compared to the city’s overall budget of more than $4 billion and add that they expect new charter provisions, such as the requirement for regular performance audits, to end up saving as much or more as the charter costs.

“It may cost us now,” the Rev. Petitt said Friday. “But in the long run, I think it will save money.”

While the two sides elbowed for advantage in advertisements and public statements, the City Council continued to wrestle with charter-related controversies at City Hall.

Council members debated a $200,000 contribution from billionaire Rupert Murdoch to the pro-charter camp, while Councilman Joel Wachs submitted his resignation from a leadership post on the board in protest over its opposition to the charter and to what he considers his colleagues’ bad faith in negotiating the document.

“I do so directly in protest of what I see as the council majority’s shameful attempt to thwart any kind of meaningful charter reform,” Wachs wrote to the council.

The Murdoch contribution touched off a rancorous debate at City Hall, where critics charged that big corporate contributors are trying to buy approval of a new charter.

In the end, despite the vitriol, the council found no evidence of wrongdoing but voted unanimously to ask the City Ethics Commission to report on the possibility of putting a measure on the ballot that would set limits on contributions to future initiative campaigns.

Councilman Mike Hernandez said corporate contributions of $50,000 to $200,000 each to the pro-charter campaign point up a “basic flaw” in the ethics rules that set a $500 limit on contributions to council campaigns, but no limit on initiatives and independent campaigns.

“It goes back to the whole notion that these elections are being bought by corporate America, by big bucks,” Hernandez said. “This is an area we seriously need to look at.”

Murdoch Contribution Raises Questions

The issue initially was raised on the council floor by Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who had asked the Ethics Commission to examine the $200,000 campaign contribution made by DLO Corp., a Delaware-based company that is part of Murdoch’s international business empire, which also includes the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles-based Fox studios.

Rebecca Avila, executive director of the Ethics Commission, told the council that there is no violation of city or state campaign finance laws, so she only gathered facts available to the public. Avila said a call to a telephone number for DLO reached a recording that said the number was for “News Publishing Australia and its Delaware subsidiaries.”

That sparked an outcry from Svorinich, who said it is illegal for foreign corporations to contribute to campaigns in the United States. But Avila said DLO appears to be a subsidiary of News Corp., an American corporation. She noted that DLO has been the source of $475,000 in “soft money” contributions to federal elections. Still, Svorinich said he plans to file a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission to determine whether DLO is subject to the ban on foreign contributions.

After weeks of heated charter discussions, some council members showed signs of wearying. Councilman Mike Feuer, for instance, criticized the whole review of the contribution, saying it has not established that anything improper was done. “It would sure be nice,” Feuer said, “if we could focus on the merits of what charter reform is or isn’t about rather than on sideshows like this.”