Confusion After Second Vote on Mayor’s Nominee

Mayor Richard Riordan’s appointment of affirmative action critics faced a new challenge during a bitter and confused Los Angeles City Council debate Wednesday that appeared to leave one Riordan appointee in limbo.

Affirmative action supporters managed to bring about an unusual second vote on the confirmation of Riordan’s appointment of Michelle Park-Steel to a new five-year term on the Airport Commission.

On Tuesday, the council had voted 10 to 2 to confirm Park-Steel, a businesswoman. But in Wednesday’s balloting, Park-Steel’s supporters were able to muster only seven votes in her favor, with eight needed to approve her appointment.

Council members said the second vote was needed because the first one took place before lawmakers knew of Park-Steel’s skepticism about preferential hiring policies, as expressed in a Times Op-Ed article that she wrote.

Meanwhile, the mayor’s office dug in its heels, maintaining that Wednesday’s council vote was out of order and that Park-Steel had been properly confirmed by the council Tuesday.

“We absolutely believe she is a commissioner,” said Noelia Rodriguez, Riordan’s press secretary.

“And most of the council agreed with us today,” Rodriguez added, noting that seven members had voted to reconfirm her.

Despite confusion about whether Park-Steel was confirmed, her case heaped new fuel on the simmering tensions between Riordan and the council’s more liberal and minority members.

“This is Gelman II,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, referring to Joe Gelman, another Riordan appointee who is heading the campaign to rescind state affirmative action laws.

Eight council members in the past two months signed a letter asking Riordan to remove Gelman, the campaign manager of the California Civil Rights Initiative, from the city’s Civil Service Commission.

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Meanwhile, Riordan also has been stymied in his efforts to remove Leslie Song Winner from the Fire Commission, with affirmative action again at issue. Riordan’s office has said Winner, a public relations consultant, has been a disruptive force on that commission.

But Riordan critics believe that Winner’s team spirit is not the problem. Rather, they maintain, Winner is on the mayor’s hit list because of her forceful championship of women and minorities employees who have complained of discrimination and harassment in the Fire Department.

Park-Steel, like Winner a Korean American, complained in an April 4 Times article that “because of their skin color” 5,000 applicants in February were prohibited by a “Draconian” 1974 court order, mandating long-range affirmative action goals, from taking an exam and competing for work in the Fire Department.

“Everyone recognizes the importance of encouraging minority races to get a fair opportunity to become firefighters,” Park-Steel wrote. “But in the hands of bureaucracy, this process can become a horror show by creating a new level of racial exclusion.”

That article and further remarks by Park-Steel on a radio talk show came to the attention of council members Tuesday morning, but only after they had voted to confirm her appointment.

During that vote, Park-Steel’s appointment already was marked by trouble. Councilman Nate Holden needled Park-Steel at one point, revealing later that he was upset because she and her husband had backed candidate Stan Sanders, Holden’s chief opponent during last spring’s municipal elections.

On Tuesday, Councilman Mike Hernandez also questioned Park-Steel about her support for a plan to pressure new concessionaires at Los Angeles International Airport to rehire workers laid off by their predecessors. Most of those laid off during the changeover in concessionaires were Latinos. But on Tuesday, Park-Steel mollified Hernandez by insisting that she believed those workers deserved to be rehired.

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Ridley-Thomas and Holden cast the only votes against Park-Steel on Tuesday, but shortly after learning of her affirmative action views, Hernandez introduced a motion to have the council reconsider its decision.

One issue that vexed council members Wednesday was news that Park-Steel probably took her oath of office shortly before Hernandez filed his motion to reconsider.

According to a deputy city attorney, the council’s ability to reconsider her appointment appears to be blocked by the timing of the oath. But despite that advice, Council President John Ferraro allowed a second vote on Park-Steel’s confirmation, resulting in the 7-5 split. Voting against her were Holden, Ridley-Thomas, Hernandez, Richard Alarcon and Jackie Goldberg.

It takes eight votes to confirm or reject a mayoral appointee, so Park-Steel fell three votes short. Park-Steel, the comptroller in her husband Shawn’s law firm, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.