Mayor Submits 300,000 Signatures for Charter-Reform Measure

Culminating a three-month petition drive, Mayor Richard Riordan and his supporters submitted 300,000 signatures Wednesday seeking to create an elected government reform panel.

The campaign needs 197,000 valid signatures to qualify a measure for the April ballot, but Riordan and his backers submitted an additional 103,000 to make up for any invalid or duplicate signatures. The mayor and Dan Garcia, a Riordan ally and head of the city’s Airport Commission, also announced plans to file a federal lawsuit to clarify legal issues that cloud the effort. The campaign, funded mostly by Riordan, is also paying for the lawsuits.

Riordan, Garcia and Studio City attorney David Fleming have argued that the city is governed by an outdated and inefficient government charter, which was adopted in 1925.

“These are 300,000 people who agree with me that the charter is outdated,” Riordan said at a news conference at the Biltmore Hotel, where 18 boxes of signatures provided a backdrop.

The mayor also reiterated his complaint that the charter hampers accountability because it distributes authority in City Hall among the council and nearly 40 citizen commissions. “I believe a charter reform commission will be able to find a way to pin responsibility on the people in charge,” he said.

The campaign has provoked criticism from council members and others who say the effort is an attempt to increase the mayor’s power at the expense of the council.

Over the next 15 days, the city clerk will sample 5% of the signatures to determine whether there are enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. If the sample shows there may not be enough signatures, the city clerk’s office will check all 300,000 signatures over the next 30 days.

Although Riordan and Fleming have touted the signatures as proof of widespread public support for government reform, Fleming said the “vast majority” of the signatures were collected by a professional firm that was paid for each valid signature it collected.

The campaign began Aug. 1 and has racked up about $400,000 in bills, most of which have been paid for by Riordan--a venture capitalist with a personal fortune estimated at $100 million.

Fleming said campaign records for the first two months of the campaign will show that Riordan has contributed 98% of the funding. The records are due today. Fleming said that a mass mailing in the last month that requested donations has generated about 2,000 checks from supporters in amounts up to $200. He said he could not provide the exact sum donated by supporters.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, a longtime Riordan critic, said it is obvious that the campaign is not a grass-roots movement but a Riordan effort to reduce the power of the City Council.

“I think the mayor has been pretty out front about this,” she said. “This has been his personal crusade to attack the council.”

At the behest of Galanter, the council voted last month to create a competing reform commission that would make recommendations for reform to the council. In contrast, Riordan’s commission would have the power to put reform measures directly on the ballot for voter approval.

If Riordan’s measure is successful, a second measure on the ballot will ask voters to choose 15 members for the reform panel.

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Although the campaign appears to have enough signatures to meet the requirements, the effort may be hampered by legal matters.

A lawsuit to be filed this week in federal court asks a judge to clarify a discrepancy in state and federal law over how to elect members of the reform panel.

State law appears to require an at-large election that would allow the members of the panel to live anywhere in the city. The federal Voting Rights Act, however, requires elections by district to ensure that minority groups are fairly represented.

Garcia, a Latino, and Christine Robert, an African American whom Riordan has appointed to the Community Redevelopment Agency, are asking in the suit that federal law take precedent and the panel be elected by district.

A second legal question is when the measure should be on the ballot. A recent city attorney opinion said the council can keep the measure off the ballot until June or later. But in the same suit, Riordan will ask a judge to rule that, once the initiative qualifies, the council be obligated to put it in the next regular election next April.

The attorneys behind Riordan’s lawsuit are from Riordan & McKinzie, his former law firm.