Deputy Mayor

In response to your editorial "Violante: Right Guy for the Job?" (July 2): I too have serious reservations about the appointment of William C. Violante as one of Richard Riordan's five deputy mayors. Yes, it does smack of being a payoff for support and possibly silence regarding the details of Riordan's three arrests, but more important is the undermining of our new chief of police. After the disastrous relations between the Police Department and the last Administration, we do not need to be sending messages to the rank and file that our police chief is going to be monitored by "one of their own."

You're six months behind on the mortgage. Your credit cards are maxed out. Your small business is treading water. Meanwhile, a tree has fallen on the roof of the office, the parking lot is full of potholes, and you've promised raises to employees, along with free healthcare into eternity. So what should you do about a mounting deficit that could lead to bankruptcy? You could make some hard choices, or you could follow the lead of the candidates for mayor of Los Angeles. I subjected myself to two mayoral debates last week - one at the Autry National Museum and another at the Valley Performing Arts Center at Cal State Northridge - and I listened to a third debate on KPCC.

Deputy Mayor Tom Houston, one of Mayor Tom Bradley's key advisers during his failed run for governor last year, is quitting his post next month to join a local law firm, Bradley announced today. Houston will be replaced by former state Assemblyman Michael Gage, who is currently vice president of the Gersten Cos. business development firm and a close friend of Houston.

The top five candidates for Los Angeles mayor faced an unusually tough grilling Thursday led by Austin Beutner, the former deputy mayor who once stood as a leading contender in the race. While in past debates the candidates have offered a striking lack of specificity about how they would tackle the city's looming $1-billion budget deficit, Beutner -- a retired investment banker who served as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's first deputy until mid-2011 -- repeatedly pressed them for details at a lively San Fernando Valley forum.

Mayor Maureen O'Connor has nominated Councilman William Jones as the city's next deputy mayor and elevated Councilman Mike Gotch to chairmanship of the Transportation and Land Use Committee, a post held by resigning Councilman Uvaldo Martinez. Jones, who is up for re-election next year, is in line for the post, which is traditionally given to the person with seniority on the council who has not held the position. Martinez was in line to become deputy mayor, but he will resign by Nov.

Mayor James K. Hahn said this week he has appointed business executive Renata Simril as his deputy mayor for economic development, filling a key vacancy in his administration. Simril served as the executive in charge of urban growth initiatives for the Genesis LA Economic Growth Corp., and previously managed commercial real estate developments.

Deputy Mayor Stephanie Bradfield, who has served as Mayor Richard Riordan's chief government liaison since 1996, formally announced her resignation Thursday. Bradfield will become vice president of communications and public affairs for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. Her resignation is effective July 10.

Reflecting political ferment in the San Fernando Valley, Mayor Richard Riordan has for the first time assigned a deputy mayor, his highest-level representative, to his Van Nuys office. Bill Violante, a longtime Valley resident, has been working half time in the Van Nuys office since early March. Local leaders had long urged Riordan to station a deputy mayor in the Valley. "It's very important that it happened," said Studio City attorney Dave Fleming, a Riordan confidant.

How many deputy mayors work for Los Angeles? Could it be four? Maybe six? Nine? Did someone say 12? Ask around at City Hall, and the answer is all of the above. Or, depending on whom you ask, none of the above. "What do we have, four?" Mayor Richard Riordan wondered. "Plus the chief of staff? Well, no, let's see. You have Ann D'Amato, Jennifer Roth, Bill Violante, Rocky Delgadillo. That's right. We have five." Sounds a little like four, but who's counting?

Mayor Tom Bradley on Wednesday appointed developer and activist Linda Griego to serve as deputy mayor, filling a $99,639-a-year position previously held by Ed Avila. Avila was recently appointed, after a national search, to become administrator of the Community Redevelopment Agency. Griego, 43, a member of the CRA's Board of Commissioners and co-owner of a popular downtown restaurant, was selected to stimulate redevelopment and attract new business to Los Angeles, Bradley said.

NEW YORK -- To his family, Ed Koch was "Uncle Eddie. " To New Yorkers, he was "hizzoner," the omnipresent three-term mayor who was remembered Monday as the man who lifted a grim city to glory but who always had time for his nieces, nephews, and a dizzying array of friends ranging from his Greenwich Village neighborhood to the White House. Koch died Friday at 88 of congestive heart failure, 23 years after leaving City Hall, but anyone who doubted his pull after so many years out of office had to look only at the faces inside Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.

MOSCOW - In a sign that Russia's ruling party will face greater challenges when Vladimir Putin begins his third term as president, an independent candidate supported by the opposition won a landslide victory in a weekend mayoral election. The preliminary results announced Monday in the runoff election gave Yevgeny Urlashov, a charismatic 44-year-old lawyer, about 70% of the vote in the city of Yaroslavl, about 150 miles northeast of Moscow. He defeated a local tycoon from Putin's United Russia party.

In a large conference room at City Hall East, more than 100 gang-intervention workers gathered last week to hear about a new approach to heading off gang violence and the destruction it causes. They had come to hear a family tell its story. The mother did most of the talking, guided by a counselor. She was there with two of her children, a son and a daughter, and they'd been through the wringer. An older daughter had gotten in trouble, deeper and deeper. She'd neglected her schoolwork and fought back when her parents tried to discipline her. She ran away from home, got pregnant.

There were 11 gang shootings in Los Angeles over this year's Father's Day weekend, a holiday that can be bittersweet for young men alienated from their fathers. Deputy Mayor Guillermo Cespedes, who heads Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's anti-gang efforts, was so distraught over the carnage that he dragged himself home at the end of the weekend and sat down to write his letter of resignation. He labored over it for an hour or so. Then he put the letter away and went back to work. Modest, insightful and slightly rumpled, Cespedes is one of Los Angeles' most quietly effective city leaders, despite having what must be one of its least-enviable responsibilities: Day in, day out, he spearheads the effort to reduce gang violence.

Ending months of speculation, First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner filed papers Thursday to explore a campaign to replace Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, saying he wants to tackle the high unemployment rate and make City Hall more responsive to residents. Beutner, 51, said he would leave his post within four weeks so that he can raise money and begin talking to voters about a campaign in 2013, when Villaraigosa will be forced out by term limits. If he runs, Beutner could be in an odd position, marketing himself as a candidate of change even though he spent the last 15 months working for Villaraigosa, who was elected in 2005.

Using some of his harshest words yet, a top aide to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa accused the City Council on Thursday of lacking a strategy for eliminating a $404-million budget shortfall. First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner, who is weighing a possible run for mayor in 2013, told an audience at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce that private businesses would not give themselves so little time to eliminate such a large shortfall. Villaraigosa will present his budget in April.

Board of Public Works Commissioner Sharon H. Morris is being promoted to deputy mayor to fill the job of Rae James, who is leaving the Riordan Administration to work at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, officials announced Thursday. A native Angeleno, Morris has worked for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Southern California Gas Company, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the city's chief legislative analyst.

The highest-ranking Latino in Mayor Richard Riordan's Administration has resigned to pursue business interests, the mayor's office announced Thursday. Sofia Garcia-Conde Zuckerman, Riordan's deputy mayor for budgetary and fiscal matters, quit to return to her Eastside furniture business and a real estate practice, Riordan's office said.

As Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa prepares to pick the next general manager of the Department of Water and Power ? his sixth in three and a half years ? the massive utility is quietly backing away from his ambitious goal of generating 40% of its power from renewable sources by 2020. That shift, initiated under the leadership of First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner, is only the latest at an agency marked by upheaval as it pursues the mayor's lofty environmental agenda. Since Villaraigosa took office in 2005, the nation's largest municipally owned utility has been in a state of churn.

Nearly a year after he became one of two top advisors to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Chief Deputy Mayor Jay Carson said Thursday he would resign Sept. 30. Carson, 33, joined the mayor in September 2009, just as he elevated "gang czar" Jeff Carr to the job of chief of staff and set out to refocus his office in his second and final term. A former press secretary to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, Carson had a hand in a major shakeup of Villaraigosa's staff, including the departure of some officials originally hired by the mayor.