After two years during which the Los Angeles city-charter-reform process had all the exhilaration of the America’s Cup race, the game suddenly turned into tournament pingpong last Friday, with what seemed like a new serve every moment. Most of the action involved our mercurial mayor, who, having started the day like Attila the Hun, went to bed that night as sweet as Bunny Pit-Pat.When we last tuned in, Dick Riordan was still kicking up the warpath, demanding that the new charter include an unmitigated provision that would give his successor firing powers over city managers that virtually no other mayor of a major Western U.S. city happens to possess. This was not what you might call a casual request: It was more like those “non-negotiable” mandates the Black Panthers used to issue back when.The mayor wanted the power to hire and fire managers without City Council interference, even though this would not become law until after his final term is up in 2001.
Source: The Mayor Blinked | L.A. Weekly