After the Fall 

So what happens now? The Los Angeles City Council’s firm majority stood firm to the last against the passage of the new city charter. Now the members of that same majority get to be the ones who implement it. What a great idea.

But nothing here is quite that simple — except, perhaps, the voting majority’s desire to see its city run better. Which resulted last week in the overwhelming passage of a large and complex new blueprint for city government. And in the sore-loser “the mayor’s money won” stances of most of the termed-out council hacks who had opposed it.

The charter’s victory was a double act of electoral faith: First, the voters believed the new document would improve a city government long gone in bureaucratic decay. Then, implicitly, they believed the current city government would promptly install the new system.

It already looks as if the voters were probably more right in the first instance than in the second. The big question remains whether that council majority wants to see the new charter put into action. Last week, council President John Ferraro announced he would form a special City Council committee to create the necessary ordinances. It was a feel-good announcement, all right. But I’d have a lot more confidence in Ferraro’s sincerity if he hadn’t — to the tune of $110,000 — become the anti-charter campaign’s biggest single backer.