The Los Angeles Times du lieu suivant : Los Angeles, California • Page 24

B2 24. iwo I.OS TIMI-S Metro Digest Local News in Brief 'Tis the Season KEN LUBAS Los AngelesTii Even In Southern California, the leaves fall In more abundance this time of year. City Recreation and Parks Department employee Jose Mendiola doesn't have time to look for the few spots of color In Griffith Park for him, fall means more time with the rake. rent increase of up to 10 for an additional adult and would bar evictions for the addition of one child and one adult to a unit. Both actions apply only to the 480,000 housing units that fall under the city's rent control law.

About 40 of the city's apartment units are not covered. Bouncer Gets 16 Years in Death of Bar Patron A Redondo Beach bar bouncer was sentenced Tuesday to 16 years in prison for manslaughter for throwing a patron head-first down a flight of stairs, killing him. Eric Charles Meyer, 32, pleaded no contest earlier this month to voluntary manslaughter for killing 25-year-old Michael Alvey of Harbor City while ejecting him from Pancho Wong's bar near King Harbor on Sept. 1. As part of his plea agreement, Meyer accepted the highest prison term allowed for the charge 11 years and acknowl- BILL BOYARSKY Term Limits: Advantage for the GOP Democrat Dick Floyd's Assembly district has a peculiar shape to it, like the front half of a horse.

The torso rests awkwardly along Pacific Coast Highway, near Wilmington. The head reaches several miles northwest to around Hawthorne, pointed in the general direction of Hollywood Park race track. I'm telling you about this oddly shaped district because it illustrates an important, but little-discussed, side effect of a pair of term-limit proposals on the Nov. 6 ballot, Propositions 131 and 140. District boundaries are drawn by the politicians and for the politicians or, to be more precise, by and for the politicians in power.

Voter approval of term limits eventually will topple the existing Sacramento power structure. Depending on your party preference, the measures can be described as either boosting Republican efforts to take control of the Legislature or breaking a Democratic stranglehold on the Statehouse. I know that's not part of the term-limit debate. Proponents are shouting reform, not partisan advantage. But I've talked to political scientists and politicians and they agree that term-limit approval would help the GOP win legislative elections.

Dick Floyd's district shows how it would work. As they began the 1981 legislative reapportionment, Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and other Democratic powers faced an unpleasant political reality. The state was becoming more Republican. While the governor, Jerry Brown, was Democratic, the party's registration edge was shrinking. And so, as politicians do, they fell back on the technique devised during the early 19th Century Administration of Massachusetts Gov.

Elbridge Gerry, when party leaders gained political advantage by drawing a district in the shape of a salamander. It came to be called a gerrymander. In Floyd's 53rd District, widely separated working-class neighborhoods in Carson, Gardena, Lawndale and Hawthorne were bundled together, The boundaries had no relation to neighborhoods or communities. The lines simply followed Democratic registration in a free-flow manner, creating a district where 60 of the voters would be Democrats. Rather than a salamander, they produced the front end of a horse a fortunate outcome, given the alternative.

Contrary to popular belief, such gerrymandering doesn't automatically produce victory in California. That's because the state has an element known as The Disloyal Democrats. These are Democrat constituents who often don't vote along party lines. You counter disloyalty and shrinking party registration by finding candidates who appeal to local tastes. Hometown heroes, so to speak.

In Floyd, the Democrats found someone perfect for this Joe Sixpack district. Rebellious and irate, union man Floyd is the guy who'd tell the foreman to take that job and shove it. But the foreman probably wouldn't fire him. For Floyd's also a jokester, the kind of legislator who wanders the Assembly floor sharing stories with his colleagues and shouting wisecracks across the room. As long as he keeps telling stories and telling off the bosses Floyd has a job.

There are a lot of local heroes like Floyd among Southland Democrats. They' can be found from Riverside to Long Beach. You can tell the local heroes by the way they always outstrip Democratic presidential candidates in their districts. Their entrenched presence, combined with the gerrymandering, gives the Democrats a huge advantage regardless of how the nation might be tilting politically at the time. So for the Republicans, the only way out is to get rid of the locals and everyone else, and start fresh: Term limits.

Republicans compare the present situation to playing football on a field that runs uphill. Trying to remedy the situation, they've backed voter initiatives to take reapportionment out of the hands of the Legislature. But the measures have been defeated. Wilson's winning the governorship would help. He could veto the Democrat's once-a-decade reapportionment bill.

But the Republicans' real hope is getting rid of incumbents like Dick Floyd. Then, when the Republicans win the Legislature, they can do their own gerrymander. That's a strong reason for Republicans to like term limits. That support was clear last Friday when I was on a panel interviewing Vice President Dan Quayle on a cable talk show. Quayle invoked the image of the team forced to play uphill.

Asked about the advantages a term limit would have for the he said "It would level the playing field." A level playing field for the Republicans, political death for Dick Floyd and, quite possibly, for the Democrats' decades of majority rule. Closing Arguments Begin in Cocaine Trial of 6 Closing prosecution and defense arguments began on Tuesday in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles in the trial of six men arrested in last year's record cocaine bust at a warehouse in Sylmar. Approximately 21.4 tons of cocaine was seized by federal and local law officials on Sept. 28 and 29, 1989. Its estimated street value was $6.9 billion.

The prosecution has argued that the six defendants five from Mexico and one from Texas, four of whom are members of the same family formed a transportation link for the Colombian-produced cocaine, hauling it from El Paso to Los Angeles big-ng trucks. The monthlong trial is expected to conclude today; jury deliberations are scheduled to begin Thursday. Huge Oil Runoff Into Santa Monica Bay Found Even though only eight inches of rain fell on the greater Los Angeles area in 1989, storm drain runoff carried more than 4.4 million pounds of oil and grease into Santa Monica Bay, according to a study released Tuesday. "We've got the equivalent of a major oil spill going into Santa Monica Bay every year because of this runoff," said Diane Cameron, an official with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group that did the study. The study also estimated that more than 522,000 pounds of zinc, 11,100 pounds of cadmium and 152,000 pounds of lead were swept into the bay because of runoff.

Those amounts are far greater than the amounts deposited by the area's two major sewage plants, the study concluded. The levels should be viewed as "rough estimates," Cameron said. Computer System Voted to Catch Welfare Cheats Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday approved a five-year contract to set up a computer fingerprinting system to catch welfare cheats. Carol Matsui, special assistant in the county Department of Public Social Services, said the new system is expected to save $3.3 million a year by catching cheaters who file multiple applications for welfare under different names. The county already keeps fingerprints and photographs of general relief applicants who have no identification.

But, Matsui said, "It's a manual system. You're talking about 50,000 fingerprints and photographs. It is very cumbersome and time-consuming." Under the new system, expected to be set up by next August, all 50,000 general Brando's Daughter Not Expected to Testify Prosecutors trying Marlon Brando's son for murder said Tuesday they probably will fail in bringing the actor's daughter back to California in time to testify against her half-brother. At a hearing Tuesday in Santa Monica, a judge ordered jury selection to begin Nov. 5 in Christian Brando's first-degree murder trial in the shooting death of his half-sister's boyfriend.

The district attorney's office has sought for months to return Cheyenne Brando from Tahiti: "We're not really overly optimistic it will happen," said Deputy Dist. Atty. William Clark. "If we had a couple of years, we might be able to pull it off." She flew to Tahiti shortly after the May 16 death of her Tahitian boyfriend, Dag Drollet, who was killed at her father's mountaintop estate. Cheyenne gave birth in June to Drollet's child.

Christian Brando, 32, had admitted shooting Drollet, but contends the gun went off accidentally while struggling for the weapon with Drollet. RTD run-around? A Montclair man's bus didn't show as scheduled downtown at 3:30 p.m. In fact, it didn't show at all a clear test of the RTD's new guarantee of a free ride for anyone whose bus is 15 minutes late. The next bus on the line pulled up at City Hall at 3:50. The man asked the driver to stamp his monthly pass, entitling him to a freebie.

The driver said: "I'm not late, I'm on time. I don't have to stamp anything." Two other passengers told the Montclair man they had been caught in the same vicious circle on other days. What gives? RTD spokesman Anthony Greno said the driver was technically correct. But any such passenger can receive compensation by phoning RTD Customer Relations at 972-6235. Or taking the bus over to RTD headquarters.

A Woody Woodpecker character appeared before the county Board of Supervisors Tuesday and was christened official mascot of the county's recycling program, a clear override of Only in L.A.'s veto attempt. We had pointed out in a previous column that woodpeckers can cause great damage to trees. relief recipients will be required to place their index fingers on a scanner, which will feed the prints into a computer. Law to Charge Landlords Interest on Deposits OKd The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday gave final approval to an ordinance that would require most landlords to pay 5 annual interest on security deposits. The council approved the long-debated ordinance in a 9-1 vote, and at the same time rescinded an earlier plan to bar landlords from increasing security deposits to match rent hikes.

The action was a compromise in a tug-of-war between landlord and tenant groups. Councilman Ernani Bernardi voted against the measure. The council also gave tentative approval Tuesday to an ordinance that would bar landlords from increasing rent if a minor child of the tenant moves into the unit. The ordinance would permit a Christian Brando, right, conferring with attorney 1 edged that he has a prior robbery conviction, which added five years to his sentence. Torrance Superior Court Judge Cecil J.

Mills said he initially intended to reject Meyer's plea and force him to stand trial on a second-degree murder charge. Al-vey's relatives had protested the plea agreement as being too lenient. Police, Sheriff's Copters Collide; Both Land Safely Helicopters from the Compton Police Department and the Sheriff's Department collided Monday evening over an unincorporated area, but none of the four officers aboard were hurt, authorities said. The helicopters "brushed against each other" at 7:45 p.m. between 500 and 1,000 feet over 139th and McKinley streets, with each suffering minor damage to its tail rotor.

Both landed safely. The sheriff's craft was responding to an undisclosed call and the Compton helicopter was on a surveillance mission, deputies said. The sheriff's copter set down at 188th Street and Success Avenue, while the craft from Compton landed at El Segundo Boulevard and Central Avenue. Audit Will Exonerate LAPD, Official Predicts While looking forward to an upcoming management audit of the LAPD, the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission predicted Tuesday that the evaluation will prove that the department is an efficient organization and "absolutely free of corruption." "The chief as well as the commission is fully supportive and in accord" with the plans for the audit," President Robert Talcott said of the audit, which was ordered by Mayor Tom Bradley. Talcott also said the commission will undertake a deeper study into the use of "graphic language" by police officers, prompted by Chief Daryl F.

Gates' recent suggestion that casual drug users "ought to be taken out and shot." He said the commission will be addressing the question of what influence a police supervisor's use of graphic language may have on how a beat officer carries out his duties. Only in L.A. RICK MEYER Los Angeles Times Robert Shapiro In court Tuesday. By Steve Harvey Los Angeles Public Library A Happy Halloween promotion from the Chamber of Commerce in the '20s. Every once in a while Only in L.A.'s tired eyes come upon an eye-catching piece of mail.

A since-forgotten local sportscaster once gave us a T-shirt announcing the time, day and channel of a since-forgotten investigation of high school sports. Another time we received the announcement of a press conference stamped on a brick. Then there was the vial of bull semen that arrived in the mail. Now comes a press packet labeled "Energy Unlimited," which has a small plastic bag containing a white, powdery substance attached to it. It's the first press release we ever had to flush down the toilet.

Only afterward did we notice it was chalk powder meant to rub on the hands while working out. miscelLAny: Here's one the recent PBS "Civil War" series missed: El Monte had such a large population of Southerners during that war that each time it heard news of a Rebel victory, a Confederate flag would be raised in the town square. Not only did the supervisors ignore us, but we were taken to task by a Woodland Hills resident who asserted that it was "a sad statement of our times that a world-famous fictional character" would be compared "to its live counterpart." She asked whether we should also "abandon such enduring symbols" as Smokey the Bear because "bears ravage campgrounds and attack people." No, it's too late to get rid of Smokey. But let's not feed him. Authorities cordoned off a baggage area in the United Airlines terminal Tuesday to examine a rifle, a hand grenade and shell casings found inside an unclaimed duffel bag.

Fortunately, there's a Hollywood ending to the story. They were movie props. Speaking of props, to get us into the Halloween mood, the L.A. Public Library's Carolyn Kozo sent over this 1920s L.A. Chamber of Commerce photo of a couple of young ladies posing cheerily with some plaster skulls.

Obviously, the Chamber of Commerce deserves some credit for the kooky reputation that L.A. has acquired..