Like all his predecessors, Mayor Villaraigosa has been an imperfect leader. Some of his four million constituents have been greatly disappointed with his overall job performance; others say they’re quite pleased. But few can identify any specific successes, or any individual failures. That’s why a column like this one is needed.

If you were to ask the Mayor about his major accomplishments, he’d probably group them under several headings, including: Transportation, Job Creation, Public Safety, Education, and Environment. The next five paragraphs touch on these accomplishments. Then, a final paragraph discusses a huge failure.

The Mayor’s initial accomplishment related to transportation was getting a ½ cent tax increase approved. That measure is letting the City create a first-class public transit system, and pay for it over the next 30 years. It lets the City double its rail transportation network, build a new infrastructure at the Port of Los Angeles, and improve transportation at the Los Angeles Airport. It’s a real success.

To create private sector jobs in Los Angeles, Mayor Villaraigosa worked with the City Council to establish a New Business Tax Holiday. That legislation encourages new start-up businesses in Los Angeles. The Mayor also signed an Auto Dealership Exemption ordinance to encourage auto dealerships to stay in — or to come back to — Los Angeles. By efforts such as these, Mayor Villaraigosa brought jobs to L.A.

Public safety has always been one of the Mayor’s main concerns. With this in mind, he’s added 800 new sworn positions to the LAPD, giving Los Angeles a police force of over 10,000 officers. Moreover, he created the Department of Gang Reduction and Youth Development as part of his office. And it’s working!

In Los Angeles, the Mayor has no legal authority over the public schools. Still, Mayor Villaraigosa worked to improve the education of children in some of the City’s poorest communities. He created the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which serves 16,000 children in 22 schools. Also, he raised millions of dollars and helped elect a progressive majority to the Board of Education.

And with respect to the environment, the Mayor’s record is clear: he created a non-profit to plant trees all over the City. The goal was to plant a million trees, and 380,000 were actually planted. The Mayor launched a Fifty Parks initiative to build parks in neighborhoods that need them, and actually opened 650 acres of new parkland. And during the Mayor’s tenure, the Department of Water and Power quadrupled its use of renewable energy! It did that through the use of new solar, wind, and thermal energy sources!

Based on the accomplishments presented here, one would have to say Mayor Villaraigosa deserves the City’s THANKS! But the other side of this story — his failures — must also be told: And four million Angelenos can decide for themselves whether the Mayor’s failures hurt the City more than his achievements helped it.

I would say Mayor Villaraigosa’s most serious failure was that he participated in an illegal scheme to dismantle the City’s civil service system. Instead of following the Charter, he embraced a radical plan to let each department manage itself. For eight full years, he enforced that plan, and dismissed documented evidence of HR mismanagement — and of the waste which accompanies such mismanagement.

Hopefully, Mayor Villaraigosa’s failed approach to Human Resource Management will not be a model for the next Mayor of Los Angeles!

Send your questions and comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com.

Some of your constituents will ask you to march into hell for a heavenly cause. Others will ask only that you fight for the right without question or pause.

But all your constituents will surely expect you to honor the Oath of Office you’ll take when you’re installed. That Oath is presented here in abbreviated form:

— “I do solemnly swear … that I will support … the Charter of the City of Los Angeles, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Mayor’s Office according to the best of my ability.”

Angelenos should know their last three Mayors (Riordan, Hahn, and Villaraigosa) took this Oath. They took it even though they had no intention of supporting the civil service provisions of the Charter. One by one, the Mayors violated their Oath and, over a 20-year period, they subjected civil service to a radical make-over.

Had those Mayors put their “New Paradigm” on the ballot, it would surely have been defeated. The voters would have viewed it as an unauthorized power grab. They would have sensed that it was an effort to tear down the firewall specifically designed to limit politicians’ involvement in civil service.

But the Mayors’ anti-civil service plan was never put on the ballot. It was forced on the people of Los Angeles by self-serving officials who violated their oath, abused their powers, and wrecked the civil service system.

Curiously, the benefits claimed for the Mayors’ plan were never explained, never publicly debated. Is it possible the Mayors didn’t really believe that civil service works best when the Board of Civil Service Commissioners is in handcuffs? Or maybe they knew all along that it was wrong to change the Charter by stealth.

Well, that was then; this is now. And you are the Mayor of Los Angeles. You will surely be expected to clean up the mess your predecessors left behind. The mess you’ll face is this: the civil service system has been dismantled. The Board has been stifled. Civil service rules are not enforced. Personnel practices are not monitored. Mismanagement is ignored. Simply put, there’s no one in charge!

Mayor, Los Angeles needs a leader who’ll support the Charter, make civil service work for everyone, and restore confidence in City government. The voters have chosen you to be that leader. You have reached the unreachable star, and if you are true to your quest, you will make Los Angeles a better place for everyone.

Send your questions and comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com.

The question is, “Where to begin?” Well, since 60 percent of the annual budget goes for employees, it may be useful to check out how that chunk of the budget is managed. Does the City treat employees the way Peters and Waterman suggest in their book, In Search of Excellence?

— “Treat people as adults. Treat them as partners. Treat them with dignity. Treat them with respect. Treat them … as the primary source of productivity gains. These are the fundamental lessons from the excellent companies’ research. In other words … if you want productivity, you must treat your workers as your most important asset.”

When pressed, City Management does agree that employees are an important asset. But does a grudging acknowledgement of their worth motivate employees? Well, in a recent edition of Workforce Management, David Greenberg wrote:

— “…Empowerment and a compelling mission help fire up the troops…. It can be a real differentiator when companies succeed in communicating and demonstrating to their people that each of them is playing an important role in something significant.”

City employees need to feel that they, and their work, are important. But based on a comment adapted from Dr. Lawler’s book, The Ultimate Advantage: Creating the High-Involvement Organization, employees need more than recognition:

— “People give more to their own work when they have more to say in how the company is run. Organizations can achieve maximum effectiveness through employee involvement. Thus, high-involvement management is not just a good idea — it’s an economic necessity.”

As a first effort in high-involvement management, department managers could invite employees to help set performance standards for their own jobs. Such an effort would turn employees into partners. It would boost employee morale and productivity. And by abandoning their antiquated, trait-based ratings, managers would greatly improve the management of employee performance.

The Mayor’s proposed budget for 2013-14, if approved by the City Council, would authorize the expenditure of $7.6 Billion. More than $4 Billion would go to support an under-achieving workforce. Something must be done — now!

Send your questions and comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com.

A different kind of unused capacity was discussed forty years ago by Claire E. Vough. In a book, Tapping the Human Resource, Vough explained: “Nobody in this world works at top capacity. I saw a survey once that said the average person works at about 30 percent of capacity … The point is, everyone has a great deal of untapped reserve capacity.”

Vough’s point applies to the employees who work for the City of Los Angeles. Based on my 27 years Downtown, I can report that the skills and abilities City employees bring to the job are typically underutilized. I can also report that many employees feel trapped in a work environment that expects too little of them.

It’s my opinion that City employees could be far more productive than their “leaders” allow them to be. Employees are not blind; they can see for themselves that the civil service system has been corrupted — that the politicians run City government. That lowers their morale — and their productivity.

Mayor Villaraigosa doesn’t know anything about managing job performance. He seems not to give a damn about morale or productivity. He spends 60% of the budget on employees, supports personnel practices that inhibit employee performance, and bills the tax-payers for a corrupted, under-achieving civil service!

Fortunately, Los Angeles will soon have a new Mayor. Hopefully, it will be Eric Garcetti. I’m confident he will honor his Oath of Office and enforce the civil service provisions of the City Charter. I’m also confident that Mayor Garcetti will pay close attention to the following words from The Greatest Management Principle in the World, by Michael LeBoeuf: “In today’s work world, few drop dead from exhaustion but many curl up and die from under-satisfaction … To get people excited about a job, the job must usually have four key ingredients: 1) a meaningful goal; 2) a way to keep score…; 3) control over goal achievement; and 4) a meaningful reward system.”

Long haul, the best way to control the cost of City government is to tap the unused capacity of 50,000 City employees. That would require the strong and effective leadership of the City’s new Mayor. That’s why I’m supporting Garcetti!

Send your questions and comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com.

Even if she’s not asked about it, Candidate Greuel should tell the people what’s happening to the City’s civil service system. She should explain that the civil service provisions of the Charter are ignored, that the Personnel Department has been marginalized, and that the Board of Civil Service Commissioners is in handcuffs. She might also explain that the City’s 34 budgetary departments now operate without effective oversight.

The truth about City Service is not pretty; the question is, what would Mayor Greuel do to clean up the mess? Despite repeated requests for information about her plans, she has not responded to such questions as these:

1. If you were Mayor, would you enforce Charter Section 540 — would you require the Personnel Department to administer the civil service system?

2. If you were Mayor, would you enforce Charter Section 541 — would you support the Board of Civil Service Commissioners, and use it as a firewall?

3. If you were Mayor, would you see it as your duty to raise the quality of performance management throughout the City organization?

Greuel’s refusal to say how she would fix the City’s broken personnel system leads me to wonder if she thinks it doesn’t need fixing. Maybe she thinks it’s OK for the Mayor to handcuff the Board and grab its powers for himself! That scary thought is reinforced by Greuel’s recently announced intention to hire an advisor whose wacky ideas helped wreck the civil service system!

One thing is clear: Angelenos are heavily invested in City employees. They have a right to expect the City’s employment system to be honest and well-managed. But over the past 20 years, a succession of three Mayors twisted civil service into something it was never intended to be. They enhanced their own powers by usurping the powers of the Civil Service Commission. And they compounded that offense by refusing to let the people vote on their radical Charter changes.

It’s time to clean up the mess at City Hall! It’s time to restore the employment system the people voted for! And if Candidate Greuel isn’t willing to acknowledge the problem and propose a workable solution, she doesn’t deserve to be elected!

Send your questions and comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com.

While the other candidate hasn’t been willing to talk about personnel matters, Eric Garcetti has publicly acknowledged that the City’s personnel system is broken. He’s fully aware of these fiscal facts: The City’s current budget is over 7 billion dollars. Of that total, over 60% supports a workforce of over 30,000 employees. Garcetti’s also aware that, together, the 34 budgetary departments spend nearly 3 billion dollars, with the average department spending over 85% of its total appropriation just for employee salaries!

Candidate Garcetti is fully aware that employees are the City’s most expensive resource, and he’s sensitive to the view that the City’s $4 billion workforce is not well-managed. If he’s elected Mayor of L.A., here’s what he’ll do about that situation.

Mayor Garcetti will honor his Oath of Office. He will support the City Charter. More specifically, he will enforce the Charter Sections related to the City’s Personnel function — Sections 540, 541, and 542. These Sections are not currently being enforced. The past three Mayors refused to enforce them and by that refusal, they violated their Oath of Office and corrupted the civil service system. Mayor Garcetti will keep his promise to the people; he’ll fix civil service.

Mayor Garcetti will appoint a Civil Service Commission to represent the public at City Hall. Its purpose, in part, will be to limit politicians’ access to City jobs. I’m confident he will appoint Commissioners who know the history of Civil Service, and who are familiar with state-of-the-art policies and practices related to the management of employee performance.

Mayor Garcetti will conduct a nationwide search for the best qualified Director of Human Resources. He’ll appoint that Director to be the General Manager of the City’s Personnel Department, to administer the civil service system.

Mayor Garcetti will appoint a Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for each City agency. Those CAOs will report to him. He may expect them to learn from HR authorities like Dr. Edward E. Lawler, III: “People give more to their own work when they have more to say in how the company is run. Organizations can achieve maximum effectiveness through employee involvement. Thus, high-involvement management is not just a good idea — it’s an economic necessity.”

Eric Garcetti would bring a touch of excellence to the city’s civil service system. That’s why I support him and why I ask the readers of this column to support him as well.

Samuel Sperling can be contacted at samuelmsperling@yahoo.com.

While he was still campaigning to become Mayor, Riordan was already plotting to subject the City’s civil service system to a radical make-over. His plan was to eliminate the Board of Civil Service Commissioners, and to turn the system into a collection of separate departments, accountable only to him.

As Mayor, Riordan moved quickly to implement his plan. He convinced the Civil Service Commissioners he’d appointed to follow him, ignore the Charter. He persuaded them they had no power to enforce the civil service rules — duty to oversee the civil service system. He turned the Commission into an appeals body.

For seven years, Riordan worked — behind closed doors — to put his New Paradigm in place. He empowered Department Managers and told them they would not be expected to follow “every inefficient procedural safeguard.” Moreover, he let them know they would no longer be subject to Commission oversight.

The new City Charter became effective on July 1, 2000. But as Boss of the City, Riordan rejected the civil service provisions in that Charter. He decided, for four million Angelenos, that the whole City would pretend those provisions don’t exist.

At this point, Riordan had only one year until he’d be termed out as Mayor. To ensure that his alternative to civil service would live on after he’d gone, he needed a couple of Charter-bashing buddies. He found one in Chairman Zine, of the Council’s Personnel Committee. He found a second partner in Maggie Whelan, and appointed her General Manager of the Personnel Department.

After spending Fiscal Year 2000-01 under the new City Charter, the Boss of Los Angeles, Richard J. Riordan left City Service. He may well have left in the hope that the people would never find out he screwed them out of a vote.

But Angelenos know about Riordan’s treachery. They know he handcuffed the Board; and they know the Board was designed to be a firewall — to limit politicians’ access to civil service jobs. Moreover, Angelenos are painfully aware that, under Riordan’s plan (a power-grab which was embraced by his successors) civil service is dead — killed by an overdose of politics!

If Wendy Greuel is elected Mayor, she’ll have to deal with the mess Riordan’s New Paradigm inflicted on Los Angeles. But instead of assuring the voters that she will follow the Charter, she’s bringing Mr. Riordan back to City Hall. Go figure!

Send your questions and comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com.

In City government, Angelenos might list any number of performance failures that could wreck an elected official’s career. Thus, this column cites seven serious failures that, according to many observers, have soured the relationship between the outgoing Mayor, Antonio R. Villaraigosa, and his constituents.

1. Violating the City Charter. Section 230 of the Charter requires the Mayor to devote his entire time to the affairs of his/her office. Yet during his first 6 months in office, Villaraigosa criss-crossed the country on behalf of a presidential candidate. And that was not his only violation of Section 230.
2. Eroding Accountability. Charter Section 541 vests the Board of Civil Service Commissioners with the power and duty to make and enforce the civil service rules and to establish and maintain the civil service system. But Mayor Villaraigosa has not allowed the Board to do what the Charter requires it to do. That diminishes department managers’ accountability to the people of Los Angeles.
3. Usurping Powers Vested In the Board of Civil Service Commissioners. By handcuffing the Board and down-sizing its role, Mayor Villaraigosa leaves City Service with no one who’s authorized to enforce the rules and oversee the civil service system. He seems to be claiming those powers for himself.
4. Refusing to Use His Management Authority. Charter Section 231(a) vests the Mayor with management authority over virtually all City departments. But instead of using that authority to improve civil service, Villaraigosa allows each department to manage — or mismanage — itself.
5. Misleading the Public. The most recent example of this failure involved the effort to raise the sales tax in Los Angeles. Initially the Mayor did not support Proposition A. Then, he said he might be persuaded to support it. And as the election date neared, he said the additional revenue was needed to close a $220M budget gap. But two days after the measure was defeated, the Mayor said the budget gap might be only half as big as had previously been predicted. But he knew that before the election!
6. Inviting Corruption. During Villaraigosa’s first term as Mayor, a major newspaper in Los Angeles reported that in his first two years, the Mayor had collected nearly twenty million dollars from wealthy donors, many of whom have business with the City. At the very least, that creates the appearance of corruption. In some cases, it may actually have resulted in preferential treatment for those donors.
7. Limiting Voter Participation. On at least two occasions, Mayor Villaraigosa acted as if the people of Los Angeles should have no say in matters that affect them. For example, the people should have been allowed to vote on the “Living Wage” issue. They were denied that right, apparently, because the Mayor didn’t trust the voters to support his position. Similarly, the people should have been allowed to vote on proposals to put the City’s school system under the Mayor’s control. But instead of asking the people to support his plan, Villaraigosa took the “Lone Ranger” approach, shut the people out and, subsequently, politicized the Board of Education.

This column represents the views of a former Villaraigosa supporter. It reports a few of the Mayor’s most glaring failures. It’s submitted as that Mayor nears the end of his career, but before his replacement has been elected. It is, of course, an evaluation. But hopefully, it will also be viewed as a cautionary note to the two candidates who want to be the City’s next Mayor: If you want the people to trust you, you must prove that you are worthy of their trust!

Send your questions and comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com

As used in this column, the term “City Management” includes all elected and appointed officials in the City organization, with specific attention to the Mayor and Council and the managers of budgetary departments.

OK. So what could City Management do for Los Angeles? First, it could put the public back in Public Service. For the past 13 years, City Management has been pushing people out of government, reducing their participation in governmental affairs. It trampled the people’s Charter, degraded the people’s Civil Service Commission, and subjected the people’s civil service system to a radical do-over. And it did all that without letting the people know what it was doing! Angelenos have a right to be informed about, to be heard on issues that affect them; City Management has a duty to be more open, more transparent than it is now.

Secondly, City Management could upgrade its approach to the management of employee performance. Since the average City department spends 85 percent of its total appropriation for employee salaries, the people of Los Angeles would probably expect those employees to be exceptionally well-managed. That is not the case, however. City Management has been unwilling to replace its antiquated personnel practices with practices that are more efficient. It continues to support the use of invalid employment tests and unreliable performance appraisals. If City Management wants to serve the people, it must upgrade its personnel practices

Finally, those who represent City Management must honor their Oath of Office.

They all vow to obey the law, and they all vow to discharge their duties to the best of their ability. But based on their conduct, it would seem that some of them don’t take their promises very seriously. They violate their oath, betray their constituents, and complain when they are no longer trusted. But those who prove not to be trustworthy damage more than their own careers: They foster distrust of government itself. And for a democracy, widespread distrust of government could be a huge problem; it must not be allowed to happen in Los Angeles!

But who can hold City Management accountable? Well, by one count there are 59 members of that group, and there are 4,000,000 Angelenos! I like those odds!

Send your questions an comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com.

These five Commissioners are Officers of the City. Before they could serve on the Civil Service Board, they were required to take the Oath of Office. They all vowed to support the Charter, and each one promised … “I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Civil Service Commission according to the best of my ability.”

The duties referred to in the Oath are from Charter Section 541: “The Board of Civil Service Commissioners shall have the power and duty to make and enforce the civil service rules and to establish and maintain the civil service system….”

These duties were approved by the voters of Los Angeles. They’re the duties the people expect the Board to discharge. And they’re the duties each Commissioner promised to discharge to the best of his/her ability.

But the ugly truth is, since the new Charter became effective on July 1, 2000, those duties have been consistently ignored. And during that 13-year period, all Civil Service Commissioners vowed they would discharge those duties, but all those Commissioners were stifled. That crippling condition was inflicted on the people of Los Angeles by the three Mayors who’ve served under the new Charter.

Without letting the people know what they were doing, the Mayors degraded the Board and grabbed its powers. That made it impossible for the Board to be a firewall between the City’s politicians and the City’s employment system.

Using their ill-gotten powers, those Mayors would not let the Board do what the Charter requires it to do. Thus, the Board has not been allowed to make or enforce the civil service rules, or to investigate rule violations. Nor has it been allowed to oversee the City’s civil service system.

For current members of the Board, it must be terribly frustrating to know they can do nothing to end the mindless violation of civil service rules; they must find it depressing that they can do nothing about the use of phony working tests — that they cannot end the use of invalid, one-size-fits-all, trait-based employee ratings.

The mess Downtown is what it is because that’s what Mayor Villaraigosa wants it to be. He could fix City Service in the four months he has left in office. He’s been asked to do that, but does not appear to be interested.

Sooner or later, though, the Board of Civil Service Commissioners must be allowed to do what the Charter requires it to do. Chances are, it will be up to the new Mayor, whoever that turns out to be, to take the cuffs off the Board!

Send your questions and comments to samuelmsperling@yahoo.com