Dan Garcia: An Experienced Civic Leader's Critique of LA Mayor's race.

Dan, few civic leaders in Los Angeles history have your knowledge of City Governance. You've chaired the Planning Commission, the Redevelopment Agency, the Airport commission and the Police commission. With the L.A. Mayorial runoff electon set for May 17th, what should voters want to learn from the candidates?

It is clear that both candidates are attacking each other, as opposed to communicating real visions for Los Angeles. It seems that the politicians have lost sight of the fact that the citizens of Los Angeles deserve to know why government is important and that it is up to them to articulate the reasons. Otherwise, local government becomes irrelevant and is merely a sideshow to Hollywood.

Elaborate, Dan, on the unique role and importance of local government.

City government manages our traffic lights, influences where we build our homes and our businesses, even how close these buildings can be to one another and how tall they can be. City government maintains the sources of our livelihoods, such as the airports and the harbors. The city even provides books for people to read through the public library system. The mix of these services and how they are provided has a very significant influence on the quality of the daily lives of citizens. People need to be reminded of this occasionally, though.

At the moment, we don't have a domestic crisis, so some of the basic service issues are being displaced by the magnitude of what is happening in Iraq. Of course, what is happening in Iraq is very important, but the issues that affect people daily, like personal safety and economic opportunity, play out at the municipal level. Our local government has a responsibility to prepare for the future and to try and improve life for the inhabitants of the city and citizens should be paying attention.

Dan, you served in L.A. Mayor Bradley's administration. You also served in the Riordan Administration. Given your experiences, does it matter much who the Mayor of L.A. is?

I think who the mayor is makes a lot of difference. During the Bradley administration, the emphasis was on getting the right people in the right positions, in order to change policies and direction and to change the composition of government and open its doors to different kinds of people. This change had not only symbolic value but actually resolved decades old tensions. Issues may not be drawn along racial lines as much as they were, but we have other challenges to confront, such as the growing gap between haves and the have-nots, that require the same kind of vision from a mayor.

Unfortunately, since the Bradley era, politics has become more of a business and has become more authoritarian. In the Riordan and Hahn administrations, many of the key positions have been occupied by people who contributed very significantly to their campaigns or otherwise raised money. Raising funds is always a consideration, but when it becomes the only consideration, that is rather another thing. Also, during the Riordan administration, I think the notion that commissioners and others would be agents of the executive branch developed. This perspective is contrary to the original goal of having independent commissions. As a consequence, the policies that emanate from the executive branch have become more rigid and less thoughtful over time, and the workings of our basic departments has been politicized to an unnatural degree.

How has civic discourse re governance changed in the last 10 to 15 years? Are our media providing sufficient information to citizens?

It seems to me that the primary source of information, the L.A. Times, has become an entertainment outlet, as opposed to a source for news. In Chicago, New York, and other major cities, there is on-going political reporting and in-depth analysis. Here, it is an afterthought. The front page of the L.A. Times suggests that it is a national paper and the California section covers California, but there isn't any metro section. There isn't any L.A. city section. There are a few running columns of little consequence, but there is no real reporting. I'm not talking about investigative reporting that shows wrongdoing, but real reporting that shows what goes on in the city to make it run.

The lack of real city reporting makes the news less meaningful to people. And, of course, the electronic media feed off the print stories, so the quality of the information about the day-to-day operation of city government never improves. This exacerbates the apathy regarding local politics, and hurts some people more than others.

As a former LA airport commissioner, what should voters expect to hear from the two mayoral candidates regarding the modernization of LAX?

The candidates for Mayor need to address the significance of LAX and other airports in the region for our short-, intermediate-, and long-term development. The discussion should also include all the perspectives that have to be considered. For instance, there should be sensitivity to local quality of life issues such as traffic, noise and air pollution, as well as recognition that the airports are not only of regional significance, but of national and international significance.

The Hahn Administration has failed to maintain a good policy relationship with the federal government, the FAA and airlines. He has also taken a narrow and somewhat self-serving political view based on the perspective of Westchester homeowners and others. That is not entirely wrong, but it is not entirely balanced either. The airport plan also raises serious security concerns. I just can't fathom it. Putting all of the people in one place at one time would seem to me to invite terrorism, not discourage it.

With regard to LAX, I think there have been too many distractions, a lot of fighting about the wrong issues, a lack of long-term vision, and lot of emphasis given to short-term, squeaky-wheel perspectives. These perspectives may be important, but they should be balanced with broader perspectives.

As the former chair of the LA Community Redevelopment Agency, what should voters expect to hear from their mayoral candidates regarding the role and proper agenda of the CRA?

The redevelopment agency was established through the Model Cities program and other 60's era programs that were intended to make vital centers out of urban cores that were decaying. These were good programs, but they became pork barrel programs for local politicians. Eventually, there was a reaction against redevelopment from those who felt that it was diverting tax dollars away form more important purposes.

What needs to be understood about redevelopment is that it is simply a tool for repairing and shaping areas of cities that are already built, so that they can serve a host of needs, including housing and job creation. Regarding the agency, the political orientation has displaced the policy orientation, and there is very little vision. It has become a local, block-by-block, politician-by-politician, committee-by-committee organization that has no broad vision. The players are simply fighting over meager benefits and it has become meaningless. A new vision has to be developed that is economically viable, articulates a social purpose in a way that is accepted by the people, and it is implemented. If the policy choices are defined and have support, there should be less opposition.

Surely, one of your more challenging experiences was chairing the LA City Police Commission. With the benefit of this experience, what ought our mayoral candidates be addressing about public safety and policing?

Everybody talks about the rate of crime and crime reduction and so on. What people outside the world of government don't understand are the vicissitudes of crime statistics reporting. It is possible that apparent reductions in crime rates are the result of improvements in the reporting of crime. What we need to do is analyze crime on a precinct or district level.

Another issue is that, if you are in Central Los Angeles or East Los Angeles, your attitude about police protection would be somewhat different than your attitude if you are in Pacific Palisades or Brentwood. I think that the leadership at the police department has improved, but there are still those who feel that police are agents of oppression; work still needs to be done to improve this perception. This is a complex problem and mere slogans will not fix it. It requires dedication, hard work, commitment to and understanding of the communities that are served. It requires that police officers be part of those communities, and both police officers and citizens have to buy in to the approach.

You spent 12 years on the City Planning Commission. What ought the mayoral candidates be addressing regarding both planning in Los Angeles and the City's search for a new planning director?

I think the candidates should address the mission of the planning department and whether or not a fundamental change is needed. Los Angeles has changed significantly over the years, and I don't think the planning department has evolved to address the changing needs. When I became a member of the commission in 1976, there were still significant portions of the city that had not been developed. In large part, the commission's business was to determine the disposition of raw, undeveloped land. That has changed. The entire city is developed. In light of this, there needs to be a re-orientation of the department toward redevelopment. I'm not suggesting that the planning department become a redevelopment agency. What I mean is that the department needs to consider how to use the tools of planning to enhance communities, to make them better from the perspective of the existing community. This approach requires different processes, different orientations, and different goals and objectives.

I think the community planning process was useful in the seventies and eighties, but it is somewhat archaic now. We need a finer, more detailed level of analysis now. However, at the end of the day, we need to decide what we want our future to look like. We need to integrate our transportation with housing and commercial development in ways that we haven't in the past. To do this we need to consider merging or coordinating the functions of transportation, planning and redevelopment, rather than having them compete.

What essential attributes, given your extensive public service experience, should Los Angeles voters be looking for in our next mayor?

I would look for somebody who is willing to take the risk of articulating and implementing a vision that goes beyond short-term, selfish interests. The mayor also needs the ability to be practical and negotiate while not losing sight of the big picture. In addition, the mayor's ability to establish good relationships with Sacramento and DC is critical to our getting a fair share of resources. And, ideally, the mayor should be able to make citizens understand the relevance of local government to their daily lives.

In closing, as the chief compliance officer for Kaiser Permanente, you are able to observe many city governments at work. Who in public office is doing really well in terms of addressing the public policy challenges we have discussed in this interview?

There are a number of cities that are dealing with these issues well. Chicago and New York have made improvements in the last ten to 15 years. Charlotte, North Carolina and Portland, Oregon are also taking some innovative approaches. Other cities are redeveloping old ports and river districts and dealing with crime, graffiti and vagrancy.

There are many lessons to be learned from the eastern cities, as well as some in the Midwest. However, every city is different and has its own challenges. New York and Los Angeles are major international transportation centers and as a result have issues that are different from most other cities. On the other hand, like New York, there is a great deal of wealth and talent in Los Angeles. A leader who could attract these resources could achieve extraordinary things. One just needs to have a vision and the guts to articulate it.