Close-Knit Group Under Riordan Never Forgot Who Was Boss

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Close-Knit Group Under Riordan Never Forgot Who Was Boss

By AMANDA BRONSTAD

Staff Reporter

For two years, Stephanie Bradfield was separated from Richard Riordan by a few steps and one word.

As one of Riordan’s four deputy mayors (later one of six) Bradfield said she was part of a tight-knit team that developed policy, implemented the mayor’s plans and met regularly with city councilmembers and city agency heads.

“Deputy mayor is a great title,” she said. “It carries with it a perception of power outside city government. As a deputy mayor of L.A., you’re really able to reach out and seek information and guidance from all over the country and, in some instances, all over the world.”

The trap to avoid, she said, is in thinking that access gives more power than it does.

“The bottom line is it doesn’t matter what your title is,” she said. “The one elected has his name on the door. Not you.”

Bradfield, who joined Riordan’s staff in early 1996, was brought on to ease his rocky relationship with the council at a time when the rift was particularly wide.

“They decided they had to make changes in their operation as it related to the Council,” she said. “We continued to have a difficult time with the City Council. We never grew that to be a great relationship.”

She was part of a small staff that worked closely, meeting regularly on Mondays. At first, the team consisted of Chief of Staff Robin Kramer, four deputy mayors and a chief operating officer. Later, the staff was reorganized and two more deputy mayors joined the group all amid considerable turnover and internal tumult that characterized Riordan’s administration.

Riordan “was not always in those meetings, but he was actively engaged in his business,” she said. She heard from him several times a week. While Kramer ran meetings and handled personnel issues, Riordan ultimately made key appointments and chose staff members.

“He liked to hear from lots of people,” she said. “He wandered up and down the halls and talked to people on the phone. But it was our job to help him reach his goal.”

The picture contrasts substantially with that of Mayor James Hahn.

Considered by many to have a hands-off style, Hahn leaves much of the control in the hands of Chief of Staff Tim McOsker. Hahn’s office was, until two weeks ago, staffed by 11 deputy mayors. In late March, three deputies tendered their resignations within 24 hours of each other, and it was not clear whether they would be replaced.

Unlike Hahn’s deputy mayors, many of who are in their late 20s and early 30s, with limited job experience, Bradfield did 13 years of work in public policy and intergovernmental affairs when she first interviewed for a job in the mayor’s office.

After 1972, when she got a degree in communications from California State University, Chino, Bradfield spent several years as a public information officer and executive director of two state agencies. In the early 1980s, she became chief of legislative and public affairs at the State Water Resources Control Board, staying there for five years.

She then became public affairs director of GTE California before moving in 1990 to become public affairs director for the Washington State Hospital Association, where she helped develop major health care reforms and legislation later used as a model by the Clinton administration.

Bradfield was hired as an assistant to Riordan. She reported directly to Kramer, with whom she had previously worked on the board of the Coro Foundation.

“I’m sure they hired me because she knew me but, secondly, because I had public policy experience,” she said. After the reorganization, she became a deputy mayor responsible for the City Council, state and federal agencies and neighborhood communities.

She resigned in 1998, soon after Kramer’s resignation.

Bradfield said her time in Riordan’s office was “clearly a time of change” in terms of senior staff appointments. While the changes did not impact her job, she said, they appear more drastic than reorganizations in the corporate world. “The change in corporations has to come from the bottom and work its way up,” she said. “In government, the top changes.”

During her time in the mayor’s office, Bradfield said her job, along with the jobs of all the deputy mayors, always remained as an adviser to Riordan and no one else.

“That’s what you’re there for,” said Bradfield, now a public affairs consultant. “You’re his agent. The mayor was the one who made the final decisions.”

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