Interview/39″/mike1st/mark2nd

By JILL ROSENFELD

Staff Reporter

Maureen Kindel

Title: President, Rose & Kindel

Born: New York, 1937

Education: High school graduate

Most Admired Person: Dr. Martin Luther King, whose leadership of the civil rights movement awakened her social conscience

Turning Point in Career: When Tom Bradley appointed her as the first woman commissioner of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.

Hobbies: Reading, long walks on the beach

Personal: Divorced; two sons, two grandchildren

Maureen Kindel has been a prominent City Hall personality for over 20 years.

During Mayor Tom Bradley’s administration, she became the first woman commissioner and then president of the city Board of Public Works, and was a close friend and confidante of the mayor. Then, 10 years ago, Kindel founded a lobbying and public affairs firm, Rose & Kindel, along with Cristina Rose, the first woman lobbyist in Sacramento. While Kindel was arguably at the peak of her political power during the Bradley administration, her firm remains a top moneymaker among local firms. In 1997, it received $1.1 million from its clients for lobbying activities in the city of Los Angeles, according to the City Ethics Commission.

Among Kindel’s 50 clients is the Air Transport Association of America, a coalition of airlines, on issues involving Los Angeles International Airport. Her firm also represented L.A.-based HMOs in their battle to reduce the amount of city taxes they pay.

Kindel first worked for Bradley on a citizens’ committee that was responsible for consolidating some city and county offices, and then as finance chair of his re-election campaign in 1976.

Question: How has City Hall changed over the years?

Answer: It is discordant today as I have never seen it in the 20 years I’ve been over there. For the last five or six years, there’s been a tremendous lack of unity and cohesiveness in moving forward on any project, and the seeming inability of the mayor to form effective political coalitions with the City Council. It’s one of the arguments for enlarging the council, so the mayor will have to forge alliances with the council to get things done.

Q: How would a larger council make your work easier?

A: If there were more people in the decision-making process, there would be greater pressure to form coalitions. The way we function is, we look for public policy benefits, to move our client’s position ahead. Therefore, the more people are involved, the easier it is to have everything out in the open, and the easier it is to form consensus.

Q: Your current connections must go back a long way.

A: Yes they do. When I was working as a volunteer, I was part of a group we called the “Bunker Hill lunch bunch.” We brown-bagged it and met in the social room of the Bunker Hill Towers once a week. Kathleen Brown was part of that she had not yet run for the school board. (U.S. Rep.) Maxine Waters was an assistant to Councilman Dave Cunningham. (State Sen.) Diane Watson was a school teacher. We used to get together and talk about what we were going to be when we grew up. It was very informal and inclusive. Women helping women.

It’s hard to get across to younger women what it was like for us. It was so different than it is today. We really did have to get together and decide what we were going to be when we grew up, and how we were going to do it together.

Q: You’ve been very active in women’s issues through the years. Have the connections you’ve made through women’s organizations been important to you?

A: It’s because of Betsy Wright (Bill Clinton’s chief of staff when he was governor) that I’m where I am today. I never would have agreed to be finance chair of Tom Bradley’s re-election campaign (in 1976) if it weren’t for her. You have to understand, women were not holding big up-front positions in campaigns. They were licking envelopes.

At the time, Betsy was head of the National Women’s Education Fund, which trained women to run for office. I called her up and told her Tom Bradley had asked me to be finance chair of his re-election campaign. I was overwhelmed. I said, “I don’t know anything about politics.” I was registered as an independent.

She said, “You have to do it. You have to.” And she took a whole day and explained to me in great detail how to fund-raise in politics. The thing I want you to remember is that this is exactly why the National Women’s Education Fund was formed.

Q: What does it mean to be a lobbyist?

A: Lobbying is essentially advocacy before government agencies. Ninety percent of lobbying is information gathering. That means getting public information, and also getting private information that has to do with the attitudes of people who are involved in government political leaders, public officials, staff people, general mangers of departments. The other 10 percent is finding what to do with the information. There’s an element of sales in it for sure. It’s clear that (elected officials) have certain interests, and one would be wise to address those interests and issues in trying to convince them of the merit of your case.

Q: Does that mean eating a lot of lunches with politicians?

A: Actually, the way we do it is fairly formal. We make an appointment to go see them in their office. They have staff with them, and we make our case. If I need to, I’ll telephone them, and if I’m desperate, I’ll run over to the City Council or the Board of Supervisors when they’re in session. That’s how lobbyists got called lobbyists they were always waiting in the lobby waiting for public officials to walk through.

Q: Let’s take one example: the airlines’ battle against diverting excess airport revenue to L.A.’s general fund. How did you go about lobbying on that issue?

A: My argument was that it wasn’t good policy to do that. Yes, it meant more money for parks and libraries. Yes, it sounded great. The only problem is, it’s absolutely against federal law. While the host cities or counties have every right to collect taxes and fees, they have no right to just take so-called profits off the top, and give it to their general funds. Those monies have to be used to improve the airport. If a city wants to take money from airports and give them to the general fund, the way to do that is get a law passed in Congress.

Q: What happened ultimately to persuade Los Angeles not to do it?

A: People in Washington got mad enough, and they cut off certain transportation funds to the city. And they threatened to cut off even more. We, along with the Air Transport Association, worked at every level of government, from the White House to the City Council.

Q: Who did you contact on the federal level to start making that happen?

A: Betsy Wright.

Q: What position did she hold at that time?

A: FOB. Friend of Bill. Before his re-election, he was very supportive of Mayor Riordan and other people. But after the re-election, things started to break loose.

Q: How do you work with some of the more colorful characters on the City Council?

A: Well, Nate Holden? He’s colorful. He was our champion on the (airport) revenue diversion issue. He was the head of the transportation committee of the City Council. He was a very effective spokesman for our cause. Washington was very impressed by fact that this inner-city councilman, who can be very articulate on issues, was speaking out very strongly on behalf of the airlines in this issue.

Q: Did the airlines contribute to his campaign fund?

A: Maybe since, but certainly not before. We approach campaign contributions in our firm in a very modest way. We tell our clients that it’s a good thing to participate, as the law allows, and they either do or they don’t. They hire us to do the work. Campaign contributions are just a precaution they take. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

Q: How do you create leverage as a lobbyist?

A: Politics is the art of the popular. Sometimes the votes come up, and it’s better to be a “yes” vote than a “no” vote.

We represented DWP managers when they were about to be fired. The politicians were blaming everything that was the matter with the DWP on the management. These (DWP managers) are salt-of-the-earth people who’ve worked for DWP all their lives. They work hard to send their children to college, mow their lawns, wash their cars. We created our leverage with the human story that we told. It resonated.

Q: You weren’t raised in Los Angeles, were you?

A: I’m from the New York area. My family died of natural causes when I was between the ages of 7 and 11, so I was raised by my aunt, who was a career woman. She didn’t have the ability to provide for me, so she sent me to a Catholic girls’ boarding school. I came to Los Angeles about 30 years ago with my husband at the time, James Kindel. He was an attorney and had a firm with John Anderson, of the Anderson School of Business at UCLA.

I was later married to Stephen Reinhardt, now a United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit judge. At the time I married him, he was president of the police commission. He was one of the key figures from the Democrat liberal community who first helped get Tom Bradley elected.

Q: How did you first meet Tom Bradley?

A: I think one of his staff people met me when I was on the YMCA board, and decided that I should meet Tom Bradley and vice versa. And he arranged it.

Q: How did his death affect you?

A: His death affected me mightily, and I’m still in mourning for him. Not only did I like him so much, and not only did I see him frequently, but he was the person who gave me my chance in life. Everything I have today in Rose & Kindel I owe to him.