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Steve Soboroff for
Mayor of Los Angeles
15477 Ventura Blvd.
Suite 300
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
Campaign Headquarters
Phone (818) 981-9317
Fax (818) 981-9550
Email
Fundraiser Info
Phone (818) 905-5420 |
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Top: Steve delivers a speech at at the Valley Radisson hotel during the second Soboroff for Mayor Volunteer Festival, which drew 300 participants.
Bottom: Steve with two members of the USA Gold Medal winning Women's World Cup Soccer Team. |
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LA Daily News: An Interview With Steve Soboroff
Steve Soboroff is a businessman and senior advisor to Mayor Richard Riordan. He is the former president of the city Recreation and Parks Commission, the former chairman of the Proposition BB Oversight Committee, and a former member of the Harbor Commission.
Q: What's important for you now in the mayoral race?
A: Everywhere that I have gone, my message of getting things done versus the political process of it is out there.
When I talk about breaking up the school district, you can't take what I'm saying either way. I'm saying break up the school district into neighborhood school districts. I'm not saying neighborhood school districts are good and you can create them without breaking it up. What I'm saying is clear as a bell, and people understand my message. They understand (my position) on the schools; they understand it on police; and they understand it on traffic. And it's working, and it's very exciting.
Q: Mayoral candidate and City Attorney James Hahn recently came out against the Sunshine Canyon Landfill. He has called for the district attorney to investigate safety violations at the landfill for possible criminal prosecutions. How do you deal with the Sunshine Canyon issue?
A: I think you do everything you can to close it down.
I congratulate (Hahn) on that, but he shouldn't have needed to come out in the first place. He didn't make a recommendation to the council that they shouldn't have done it in the first place. Where did he get all the religion? (Browning Ferris Industries spokesperson) Arnie Berhoff used Hahn as a shield when they got the approval in the first place, saying that the city attorney had said that they are within their legal rights. They used him as a shield, then they gave him a thousand bucks.
Basically, (Hahn) talks about his experience; mine is as a problem solver and not a politician. His experience is the kind of experience we don't need anymore. We have had enough of that kind of experience. The experience of "I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Turn it over to the federal government." Or "I didn't do it. I didn't do it. It happened, and now I'm going to stop it," when they could have stopped it in the first place and when they should have.
(Hahn) came out and said that because of litigation, he couldn't even take a position on it. Now all of a sudden, he's taking a position on it. I just don't think it cuts the mustard. People think more than these guys think they do.
Q: You've been part of Mayor Richard Riordan's inner circle of advisers for a long time. What is your analysis of his eight years?
A: I think that from an entitlement perspective, I give it a C grade. We made some progress and the city is more business-friendly than it was. I think the tax structure is better than it was. But we are at the 50-yard line in those areas. Now the reason that they didn't get finished, you can blame the council.
I would say that (I would work on the) relationship with the council, of course. If you want to go sailing and there is only one boat at the dock, you got be friendly with the person that owns the boat. I'll do better at that. And I did better at it as a parks commissioner.
(In Riordan's tenure in office) there has been progress in public safety, in hiring cops. Now, we see that there is no morale. We see that they didn't implement these Christopher Commission reforms because they didn't and because its no one's fault. (Now they decide) let's turn it over to the federal government, which has no history of running local police departments effectively. When they do, the crime rate goes up and morale goes down.
This is a time for me. We are out of this boom economy. The city needs somebody who has business experience, who has practical experience, who has public service experience, who has been here for eight years for free, never taking a dime for gasoline or magazine subscriptions or mailers.
Q: What do you do about the Police Department then? How do you turn it around?
A: If this isn't the time for an implementer. ...
I'm a dot-to-dot guy, I don't say we've got to go from A to Z, and then go on vacation or leave it for somebody else. Every day I want to make a step, I want to head toward B, then I want to head toward C. And there is a five-year plan to get to Z, and I'm going to make darn sure that we get that plan implemented and satisfy these conditions.
The reality is that consent decree is here. As much as I disagree with it, and I don't disagree with police reform, I am as pro-police reform as anybody. I'm as pro-civil rights as anyone on the planet, but I also believe that at the same time we can concentrate on fighting gangs, on lowering crimes, increasing arrests and on having good morale. This isn't a time to concentrate all of our energy in one area while everything else runs out of control.
Q: Is Police Chief Bernard C. Parks in the way of being able to do that?
A: If today was the day that I had to push the green light to keep him or the red light not to keep him, if today was the day, I would push the red light. I like him, but the issue is, our crime rate is up. Our arrest rate is down. There's no morale.
There are seven gang members out there for every officer now. And when I went over to the Jeopardy program, they told me that there are an additional 70,000 gang members that have not been registered as hard-core gang members that are all ready to be registered.
Q: If you were a gang member, wouldn't you think you ruled the streets? Isn't the message the city has sent out is that the police officers have been hamstrung?
A: There is no question about it. Not only a gang member, but what about someone driving their car through a stop sign? All you have to say is, I didn't do it, why are you looking at me like that? Absolutely this is empowerment of the wrong side. I believe that is a badge that has been tarnished; I believe it is a badge that can be quickly shined.
Q: How?
A: By getting the appropriate leadership. By creating the morale and by having a balance on the Police Commission, and on the independent oversight committee that looks at not just one thing and one thing only. Police reform is something to look at. But in addition, the civil rights of the people who live in the city of Los Angeles are important. The civil rights of the hard-working men and women of LAPD are important in addition to the civil rights of the people who are being arrested. We have to have a balance, and we need to make these arrests. The message that needs to go out is, the empowerment of the gang members is over. This is not the place to be.
Q: Let's turn to transportation. How do you get cars, buses, trains moving in Los Angeles?
A: No. 1 is the 23-point no-nonsense plan that I have to make traffic work better with what we have. It has to do with reversible lanes. It has to do with construction crews during work hour. It has to do with left-turn signals that work on demand instead of on timers. It has to do with longer stacking lanes. It has to do with staggered work hours. It has to do with a number of things.
Then we go to (the Metropolitan Transportation Authority). One thing that is clear as a bell to me is that (the Los Angeles Unified School District) should never ever build another school, and MTA should never ever build another massive infrastructure line.
If MTA can concentrate on one thing and one thing only -- cleaning up buses, making them on time, making them go where people want them to go to where they need to go and making them safe -- that's plenty for that whole building to concentrate on.
I met with (MTA Chairman) Julian Burke and the top four people at MTA. I talked to them about what we did at the city Recreation and Parks Department, and that is create autonomous departments. There is a Valley region of Rec and Parks that barely ever needs to go downtown now, and there are the neighborhood councils that serve them.
I believe in separate transit districts, and they don't. But there are six seats on that board coming up right now, four seats from the mayor and two other seats. There is potential to go back and revisit that issue because a separate transit district here would work. There are so many places where we see a dirty, graffiti, MTA empty bus following a clean Big Blue Bus (from Santa Monica) that's full.
Q: What is your view of neighborhood councils?
A: Obviously, it is not enough. They have been talking about it for eight years. They have done three or four of them. (Councilman) Mark Ridley Thomas took a whole bunch of his money and put it into the one that really seems to be doing the most and having the most results.
The whole park system now is virtually run by the neighborhoods. We created 153 of these park advisory boards. They are a little flawed. They're not perfect. We just said let's do them and then a year from now let's go back and revisit them and let's tweak it. We are not afraid to make 20 mistakes or 15 mistakes out of 153. We did 153 in six months.
Q: The (Local Agency Formation Commission) plan would be to have the Valley, San Pedro and Hollywood secession issues on the ballot in 2002. What would be the benchmarks at that point to measure your administration on why voters should choose to stay in the city?
A: I would say that if we can't do with public safety, even though there is a consent decree, if we can't do with public works what we've done in Rec and Parks and what we have done at the schools by tearing out 20 million square feet of asphalt and putting in 20 million square feet of grass and trees for no money ...
I would say if we can't create the kind of momentum people can feel and see, those would be the benchmarks. I think it is something that will work in every single department and if it doesn't, then the will of the people will be the will of the people.
Q: How do you get more investment in the Valley, in North Hollywood if there is no money, if it is all committed?
A. To me, downtown Van Nuys and downtown San Pedro are just as important as downtown Los Angeles. To me, if you want to talk about any place where the scales are out of balance and need to be put back into balance, it is the amount of transportation money, the amount of infrastructure money, the amount of everything going into downtown versus these areas talking about secession. The resources have to tip in the other direction.
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