Lighten up on the mayor

MOST PEOPLE remember Rudy Giuliani for his handling of 9/11. But to those who study city government, it was what happened to crime rates during his time in office that made his tenure most memorable. It's not just that crime rates fell dramatically and stayed down. It's that, up until Giuliani, mayors and police chiefs tended to treat rising crime rates, disorder and a withered street life as intractable urban problems. He showed that a mayor and an aggressive police commissioner -- William J. Bratton, now L.A.'s police chief -- could restore vigor and civility to the streets.

This achievement did not spring from one big initiative but from a series of little ones, such as making the New York Police Department, from brass to precinct commander, accountable for results; using the CompStat computer statistics and mapping system to identify crime trends and policing priorities; and going after "quality of life" crimes.

This is an important lesson to keep in mind when assessing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's term so far: Big achievements in city government usually grow out of small advances -- and sometimes take a while to flower.

After nearly two years of mostly positive media coverage, Villaraigosa got knocked around a bit in April -- a Times editorial wondered whether he was suffering from a "sophomore jinx" -- after the city lost its bid to host the 2014 Olympics and, more important, a state appellate court effectively kneecapped his drive for a greater say in the governance of the L.A. Unified School District.

These setbacks were noteworthy, said Cal State Fullerton professor Raphael Sonenshein, who has written extensively about city politics, "because there's always been the question with Villaraigosa of whether there are too many things on his agenda and what will have been accomplished when his first term is up." In other words, in a city that expects a lot from him, Villaraigosa doesn't yet have any signal achievements on the order of, say, former Mayor James K. Hahn's successful campaign to defeat San Fernando Valley secession. So the pressure is on the mayor in the remaining two years.

Villaraigosa's accomplishments so far are hardly trivial, though. He has navigated the city's treacherous currents of race and ethnicity with aplomb, most notably in defusing the racial tensions surrounding his veto of the City Council-approved settlement of firefighter Tennie Pierce's racial discrimination suit. He has worked hard to give city government an appealing public face by showing up in far-flung neighborhoods to attend events big and small. Most important, he has taken hold of City Hall and its bureaucracy in a way Los Angeles hasn't seen since Tom Bradley was mayor.