RIORDAN/43″/mike1st/mark2nd

By HOWARD FINE

Staff Reporter

With yet another round of staff changes last week, L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan is struggling to keep his administration from foundering as it enters the home stretch.

Several of the mayor’s major initiatives from the expansion of L.A. International Airport to an attempt to revamp the L.A. school board have either stalled or have been bungled. His relations with the City Council are at a low ebb.

Riordan had hoped that making former Business Team chief Lesa Slaughter his new chief of staff would help revive his office. But after just three months Slaughter was fired, and last week Riordan threw his dice again on insider Kelly Martin, who becomes his fifth chief of staff in five years.

How did the mayor’s office get this chaotic? And what does the turmoil say about his ability to lead the city?

Conversations with several City Hall insiders, ex-Riordan staffers and outside political observers paint a picture of a mayor who after five years in office still clings to his experience as a businessman and venture capitalist.

“Riordan’s style is much more entrepreneurial and less how a bureaucrat typically operates,” said Richard Lichtenstein, president of L.A.-based Marathon Communications.

As part of this entrepreneurial approach, observers say, the mayor is quick to advance a prospect he likes and trusts, like Slaughter, but is just as quick to drop that “investment” if his expectations aren’t met.

These observers say Riordan also likes to give his staff plenty of leeway to carry out their missions. While this approach avoids micro-management and forces staff members to be more accountable, in some cases as with Slaughter it means they sink or swim largely on their own.

Above all, observers say, what matters to Riordan most is results. With an often-hostile City Council and a huge bureaucracy that is slow to change, the premium on results is summed up by this mantra: Better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission.

The key to success in this kind of environment is being able to make things happen, according to William Ouchi, the UCLA Anderson School of Management dean who served as Riordan’s chief of staff from 1994 to 1995.

“If you don’t make things happen, he’s going to be all over you,” Ouchi said.

That’s part of what happened to Slaughter following the series of missteps and blunders that plagued Riordan this summer, according to City Hall insiders and others familiar with the situation.

Neither Slaughter nor Riordan returned calls last week. Aides said Riordan left town after announcing Martin as his new chief of staff. Martin said neither she nor anyone else in the Riordan administration would answer questions concerning Slaughter’s departure.

From the outset, Slaughter’s appointment to the chief of staff post on June 16 caught most everyone off guard and created considerable resentment among other Riordan staffers who felt she lacked experience and was promoted too quickly.

Slaughter, 34, had been with the Riordan administration for three years, all with L.A.’s Business Team, the mayor’s business retention group. For two years, she was a Business Team representative for the Hollywood area; last year she was picked to head the group.

She had contacts with some City Council members, most notably Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who became one of her staunchest supporters. But Slaughter had little experience in dealing with the rest of Riordan’s staff nor with the political complexities of City Hall itself.

When Riordan asked Slaughter to serve as his chief of staff (Slaughter is said not to have sought the post), he valued her ability to get projects completed and wanted that ability to be brought over to his staff. “She’s an implementer,” he said at the time. “She gets things done.”

But Slaughter quickly ran into problems. She spent several weeks trying to get up to speed as part of what others termed a “very steep learning curve.” Her job was made even more difficult because of opposition from other Riordan staffers.

“She tried to reach out, but quickly became isolated,” one observer said. “Staff simply began going around her to get what they wanted.”

At that point, one City Hall insider said, Riordan should have stepped in and “gone to bat for her.” But, in keeping with his style to give his managers broad leeway, Riordan left Slaughter largely on her own to deal with a rapid succession of critical issues. Unlike her predecessor, Robin Kramer, Slaughter did not have her own City Hall expertise to draw on.

First came the Board of Education fiasco. What many saw as a laudable goal lining up a slate of candidates committed to changing what is generally recognized as a dysfunctional board was botched in execution. Word leaked out before the rest of the business coalition backing the slate was prepared and even before the candidates themselves had been informed that they were being backed by Riordan. As a result, momentum for the initiative quickly fizzled amid a strong backlash.

“The execution of something like this, that’s what the chief of staff is supposed to do. It’s the dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. That clearly wasn’t done here and it showed,” one observer said.

Responding to the criticism levied at the Riordan administration for its handling of the issue, Martin said that Riordan does not look backward. “He looks forward. He makes a correction and then moves on,” Martin said.

Then, about a month ago, City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie unexpectedly criticized Riordan’s support for charter reform proposals that would give the mayor unilateral power to fire city department managers. Comrie called the move a dangerous power grab that would lead to corruption.

Instead of a vigorous response from Riordan’s camp, there was virtual silence, which allowed Comrie to seize the debate. Then last week, Riordan’s camp suffered a further setback on the issue when the appointed charter reform commission voted to switch course and reject giving the mayor sole power over department head firings. (The elected charter reform commission still supports giving the mayor that power.)

Martin downplayed the appointed charter commission’s decision.

“Ever since the City Council came up with the idea of an appointed charter reform commission, the mayor knew that it would be a defender of the status quo,” Martin said. “That’s why he fought very hard for the elected charter reform commission.”

Then there was the leak of a pending announcement concerning release of federal funds for more local police. Word of the grant came out a couple of days before Vice President Al Gore was scheduled to make the announcement, causing a minor embarrassment.

All this played out against a larger backdrop of continuing frustration over the lack of progress with efforts to expand LAX and seemingly endless turmoil at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which Riordan chairs.

At some point during these frustrations, Riordan soured on Slaughter. Sources said he tried to ease her out of the post two weeks ago, but again, word leaked out and Slaughter was abruptly fired on Oct. 2.

Riordan moved quickly to fill the chief of staff spot with Martin, who many felt should have gotten the post in June.

Martin, 38, first met Riordan while she was a partner specializing in corporate finance at his law firm, Riordan & McKinzie. She initially joined the Riordan administration in 1993 as deputy mayor for economic development. She then took a two-year hiatus to accept a job as vice president and general counsel of Merisel Inc., an El Segundo-based computer software company. She rejoined the Riordan team in January 1997 as deputy mayor for finance and policy.

As with Slaughter, Martin has impressed Riordan with her ability to get things done, City Hall observers said. One of those accomplishments was pushing through an initiative that tightens regulation of slum housing in the city.

The question, though, is whether she can move the Riordan agenda forward. She will not have nearly as much time to acquaint herself with the post as Slaughter did. In just two weeks, Riordan is due to go to Kansas City to make a pitch on behalf of the New Coliseum Partners’ bid to win a National Football League franchise to put in a renovated Coliseum. And, in the next few weeks, the final charter reform proposals are due to be released.

With only two more years in office, both these issues along with the LAX expansion and construction of the Alameda Corridor could form a large part of the Riordan legacy.