How Richard Riordan Blew $800,000 on a Failed Try at Pension Reform

Rick Taylor, a political consultant who has run several successful signature efforts, says he would have hired a different firm, PCI Consultants. Most recently, PCI gathered the signatures to overturn L.A.'s medical marijuana ban. (Indeed, one of the ironies of Los Angeles politics is that pot shops turned out to be better organized than the former mayor.)

"That's who you gotta go with," Taylor says. "It's gonna cost more money, but those are good, valid signatures."

PHOTO BY VON DER GROEBEN/ZUMA PRESS/NEWSCOM

Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan

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• Richard Riordan
• Carl DeMaio
• San Jose
• Retirement Planning
• Personal Finance

Lee Albright, who runs National Petition Management, declined comment.

Riordan tells the Weekly he had confidence in Albright's professionalism and candor.

As the Dec. 28 deadline approached, Riordan increased the spending per signature in hopes of speeding up the process. His budget ballooned, but the raise had little effect.

Riordan fired his consultant and hired one who had worked on the San Diego campaign. But by mid-November it became clear that it was too late. In a conference call with Riordan and his team, DeMaio was blunt, he tells the Weekly.

"You guys are dead men walking," DeMaio told them. "You do not have time. You're going to throw good money after bad."

One other thing, DeMaio says he told them: "You should have had a lot more money from the get-go."

Had Riordan succeeded in getting the measure on the ballot, it's not at all certain that it would have passed. While voters broadly support pension reform, they are less inclined to support 401(k) plans, especially for police officers and firefighters, says Vic Ajlouny, the consultant who ran the San Jose campaign.

"Our numbers showed a 401(k) would have been more difficult," Ajlouny says. "When you do 401(k)s, what entices an employee to stay with the city?" Officers could easily change jobs and take their retirement portfolios with them. "You really need the experience," he says.

Riordan also was unable to rebut charges that his plan was a fiscal boondoggle because he never paid for his own analysis. Zane, who worked on the San Diego effort, says his group did a thorough fiscal analysis of its proposal before seeking signatures.

"Even if they had qualified the initiative," Zane says, "they were potentially doomed."

Now, Riordan says, it's up to L.A.'s elected leaders to address the pension crisis.

"The unions and the city council and the mayor have to come to their senses and realize this city is headed directly toward bankruptcy," he says.

In 2010, Riordan famously predicted that the city would be bankrupt by 2014. Almost three years later, the city is struggling but no closer to insolvency, so Riordan has had to postpone doomsday.

"The tipping point will be when people stop buying city bonds," he says now. "Probably 2017."