As weeks go, this was not a great one for Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich.
On Monday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed a charter amendment that would strip the city attorney of the power to represent the city in civil court. The next day, a budget official called for 50 of Trutanich's staff lawyers to be laid off.
And on Friday, several City Council members mounted a campaign in support of a ballot measure that would allow the council to stop relying on the city attorney for legal advice. The measure would give lawmakers the power to hire their own lawyers instead.
Along with prosecuting misdemeanor crimes and defending the city against lawsuits, the city attorney is responsible for giving legal advice to the council and writing the laws requested by members. But Councilman Paul Krekorian complained that budget constraints have caused delays in the office's work on key ordinances. He cited an ordinance he helped get approved in late 2010 that helps local businesses seeking government contracts. It took more than a year for Trutanich to produce a final version of the law.
A top aide to Trutanich attacked the changes proposed by Krekorian, saying they would create "a whole new bureaucracy that will cost more money. "They can correct any deficiencies by fully funding the city attorney's office," said William Carter, Trutanich's chief deputy. "All they have to do is provide more resources."
The proposed changes come after years of tense relations between Trutanich and council members, who have thinned his staff through layoffs and mandated vacation days and accused him at times of overstepping.
When Trutanich was elected in 2009, he and the council got off to a "pretty rocky start," said Raphael Sonenshein, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. But Sonenshein said the debate over how much power the city attorney should wield at City Hall is not new.
In 1999 former Mayor Richard Riordan lobbied the commissions that overhauled the City Charter to make changes that would allow lawmakers to appoint their own legal council, said Sonenshein, who served as executive director of one of the commissions. He said commissioners did not make those changes, in part because of the complications that might arise if the city attorney were stripped of certain powers.
If the mayor and the council each have their own lawyers and the city attorney continues to represent the government in other matters, Sonenshein said, the question could become: "Who is the city's attorney?"
"There is a concern down the road of not knowing who the city's voice is," Sonenshein said.
Councilman Bernard C. Parks said he supports Krekorian's proposal because the city attorney's office often takes too long to draw up revenue-generating ordinances that rob the city of potential revenue if they are not implemented quickly.
Parks, who chaired the council's Budget and Finance committee until earlier this year, said delays with ordinances are "more routine than exception."
Carter challenged that claim, saying Trutanich's office produced 245 ordinances and reports to the council last year. Rocky Delgadillo, the previous city attorney, never produced more than 200 such reports in any year, Carter said.
Parks said he doesn't view Krekorian's proposal as "stripping the city attorney of its authority" but as giving the council more latitude to seek advice.
Villaraigosa said in a statement that the city should "consider all options," including Krekorian's proposal. "This is not a personal issue," the mayor said. "It's about exploring ways to make city government work more efficiently."
City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana is in the process of analyzing the mayor's proposal to take away the city attorney's responsibility of representing the city in civil court. Trutanich said in a statement earlier this week that the mayor's proposal "shows a distressing lack of imagination."
Trutanich, who ran for district attorney and lost, is now running for reelection. His opponents in the March primary include Greg Smith, a lawyer who has sued the city on behalf of police officers and firefighters, and state Assemblyman Mike Feuer, who served on the council for six years. Feuer said Friday that he understands the council's frustration with Trutanich but opposes the proposed changes. "When you have a bad employee, you don't restructure the job," Feuer said.
Trutanich has complained frequently that he has been constricted by budget cuts, which his aides say have stripped the city of 110 attorneys and 60 support personnel over the last three years. During a tense council budget hearing earlier this year, he pleaded for more funding, telling council members that without appropriate funding, his priority would have to be on defending the city against lawsuits and prosecuting criminals instead of doing the legislative work of lawmakers.
"The focus of our office is no longer service to the council," Trutanich said.
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
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