The Power Agenda
Why does City Hall deny the truthabout Mayor V’s school plan?
Romer offered an array of warnings about the bill, saying it could be a precursor to breakup, since different sections of L.A. Unified could be offered a chance to make their own hiring decisions. But Romer sounded like King Lear in Sacramento, railing over the district’s political misfortune as lawmakers looked away.
REALITY BRIEFLY INTRUDED on Villaraigosa’s march to Sacramento, forcing him to turn from his school campaign to an annoying municipal matter — a strike by the 7,500-member Engineers and Architects Union. The EAA supported the mayor during the 2005 election, spending $110,000 on radio advertisements and other campaign expenses, only to turn on him viciously once Villaraigosa refused to give them the same salary package as workers at the Department of Water and Power.
Yet despite all the hype surrounding Villaraigosa’s decision to cross a picket line, it was hard to view the EAA strike as serious drama. This was no MTA walkout, with bus drivers crippling the city’s ability to serve its citizens. These were building inspectors, city planners, tech-support workers and public-relations people. Sure they’re important. But will the voters rise up when a second-story home addition can’t get through plan check? Not likely.
Even as the mayor outmaneuvered the EAA, another seasoned pol flexed his considerable political clout. Former mayor Richard Riordan, a backer of Villaraigosa’s plan for L.A. Unified, worked behind the scenes to rewrite portions of the bill, worrying that a judge will strike down the provisions that give the mayor more power while preserving the language that strengthens the hand of the teachers union.
Villaraigosa spokeswoman Janelle Erickson pooh-poohed such efforts, offering a lulu to the Los Angeles Times. “We need to shift the focus away from legislative maneuvering and put it back in the classroom,” she told the newspaper.
The thing is, Villaraigosa’s bill is the naked result of legislative maneuvering, from a closed-door deal with the teachers union to billionaire Eli Broad’s telephone calls to Núñez last spring. That’s because Núñez and Villaraigosa insisted from the beginning that the neutering of the seven-member school board had to be decided in Sacramento — not Los Angeles, where voters spent the past century electing that board. But then, letting the voters make such an important decision would have meant giving up — how else to say it? — power.
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