Santa Cruz hit hard by officers' deaths

SANTA CRUZ — Flags throughout this sparkling beach town flew at half-staff Wednesday. The entire Police Department was meeting with grief counselors. Handmade signs cropped up, sympathy cards to a stunned city.

"Thank you for your service Santa Cruz Police Department. RIP Detective Baker. RIP Detective Butler." That's what Mary Gregg wrote in neat black letters on yellow construction paper, hanging her message in the window of the downtown check-cashing store where she works.

"Something," she felt, "had to be said today."

Best known for its surfing museum and a roller coaster that Bay Area newspaper columnist Herb Caen described as "one long shriek," Santa Cruz is not used to the kind of pain that rippled through town the day after a gunfight left two veteran officers — and the man they were investigating — dead.

The city's Police Department, which has less than 100 sworn officers, had operated for 150 years without losing a single one in the line of duty. Until Tuesday afternoon, when two veteran detectives in plainclothes walked up to Jeremy Goulet's house as part of a misdemeanor sexual assault investigation.

Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker, 51, and Det. Elizabeth Butler, 38, were killed on Goulet's doorstep, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak said during a news conference near an impromptu memorial at police headquarters.

"We don't know all that happened when they came into contact with Goulet," said Wowak, whose department is leading the investigation so Santa Cruz police can mourn. "We do know what was left in the aftermath."

The 35-year-old Goulet, who had a long history of run-ins with the law, killed and disarmed the detectives before fleeing in Baker's car, Wowak said. Law enforcement officers from throughout the region began a sweep of the Santa Cruz neighborhood where Baker and Butler were slain. A short time later, Goulet ditched the car and tried to flee on foot.

In the ensuing gun battle, Wowak said, Goulet shot up a firetruck, sending firefighters, medical personnel and passersby scrambling. After killing the suspect, authorities discovered Goulet had been wearing body armor and had three guns.

"It is our belief that two of the three weapons belonged to the Santa Cruz Police Department, but we haven't confirmed it," said Wowak, adding that it was still unclear whether Goulet had taken the body armor from Baker's car or had it on before the shooting broke out.

"We know now that he was distraught," the sheriff said. "We know now that he had the intention of harming himself and possibly the police.… There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the officers who engaged Goulet stopped an imminent threat to the community."

Goulet had been arrested Friday on suspicion of disorderly conduct. Local news accounts said he had broken into the home of a co-worker and been fired from his job at The Kind Grind coffeehouse Saturday. A manager at the beachfront shop declined to comment Wednesday.

According to Goulet's father, the barista — who recently had moved from Berkeley to Santa Cruz — was a ticking time bomb who held police and the justice system in deep contempt. Ronald Goulet, 64, told the Associated Press that his son had had numerous run-ins with the law and had sworn he would never go back to jail.

But the elder Goulet said he never thought his troubled son would turn to such violence.

Goulet said his son undermined any success in the military (he reportedly was a member of the Marine Corps Reserves and later the Army) or college because of an insatiable desire to peep in the windows of women as they showered or dressed.

"He's got one problem, peeping in windows," his father said. "I asked him, 'Why don't you just go to a strip club?' He said he wants a good girl that doesn't know she's being spied on, and said he couldn't stop doing it."

In 2008, a Portland, Ore., jury convicted Jeremy Goulet on misdemeanor counts of unlawful possession of a firearm and invasion of personal privacy after he peeked into a woman's bathroom as she showered, said Don Rees, a chief deputy district attorney in Multnomah County.

Goulet faced additional charges, including attempted murder, after he allegedly fired a gun at the woman's boyfriend. The two had fought after Goulet was spotted outside the woman's condo, but a jury acquitted him of those charges, Rees said.

During the trial, Goulet admitted that he liked to use his cellphone to record unsuspecting women undressing, according to the Oregonian newspaper. Prosecutors alleged he had peeped at women "hundreds of times" without getting caught.

Goulet was given three years' probation, Rees said, but spent time in jail after his probation was revoked.

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Eric Garcetti showed political savvy during busy student years

Fourth in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls.

Ben Jealous still recalls walking into a Columbia University meeting of a new group called Black Men for Anita Hill and seeing a half-Jewish, half-Mexican kid from Los Angeles leading the discussion.

"What's he doing here?" he asked the professor who organized the meeting.

"Honestly brother," the teacher replied, "he's the only one here I'm certain will really work hard."

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It was Jealous' first exposure to Eric Garcetti, a committed young progressive known on campus for gliding between different worlds and liberal causes. As a political science major at Columbia, Garcetti patched plaster and painted walls in low-income apartments in Harlem while also serving as the president of an exclusive literary society known for its wealthy membership. He led a men's discussion group on gender and sexuality, ran successfully for student government, and wrote and performed in musicals.

His busy student years offered hints of the future political persona that would later help him win a Los Angeles City Council seat and emerge as a leading candidate for mayor. As he pursued countless progressive causes — improved race relations in New York City, democracy in Burma and human rights in Ethiopia — Garcetti also exhibited a careful stewardship of his image and a desire to get along with everyone.

Some of his critics complain that he is confrontation averse, and say his chameleon-like abilities are political. Others complain that he has lost touch with his activist roots, citing his recent advocacy for a plan to allow taller and bigger buildings in Hollywood despite strong opposition from some community members.

But Jealous, who went on to study with Garcetti at Oxford, where they were both Rhodes scholars, remembers his classmate as "authentically committed" to social justice and naturally at ease in different settings. That was a valuable trait in early 1990s New York City, when tensions between whites and blacks were high, said Jealous, who is now the president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Against a backdrop of racial violence, including the stabbing of the Rev. Al Sharpton in Brooklyn in 1991, "there was an urgent need to build bridges," he said.

On Columbia's campus, Garcetti pushed to involve more men in Take Back the Night protests against sexual violence and tracked hate crimes as president of the National Student Coalition Against Harassment. He also worked against homelessness and founded the Columbia Urban Experience, a program that exposes incoming freshmen to city life through volunteerism.

Judith Russell, a Columbia professor who taught Garcetti in a yearlong urban politics course, remembers him as a skilled organizer. "Eric was one of the best people I've ever met at getting people to agree," she said.

He was also ambitious. Russell says she wrote countless recommendation letters for Garcetti, who was always applying for some new opportunity. "For most people I have a file or two. For Eric I have a folder," she said.

Even as a student, Garcetti went to great lengths to guard his image and public reputation. In a 1991 letter to a campus newspaper, a 20-year-old Garcetti sought a retraction of a quote that he acknowledged was accurate. A reporter wrote that Garcetti called owners of a store that declined to participate in a Columbia-sponsored can recycling program "assholes." Garcetti said the comment was off the record.

"I would ask, then, if you would retract the quote, not because of the morality of my position, rather the ethics of the quoting," he wrote.

That self-awareness came partly from being raised in a politically active family. Back in Los Angeles, his father was mounting a successful campaign for county district attorney. His mother, the daughter of a wealthy clothier, ran a community foundation. Her father, who had been President Lyndon B. Johnson's tailor, made headlines in the 1960s when he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on Johnson to exit the Vietnam War.

Garcetti's family wealth allowed him to carry on the legacy of political activism. While attending L.A.'s exclusive Harvard School for Boys, he traveled to Ethiopia to deliver medical supplies. In college, while other students worked at summer jobs, he traveled twice to Burma to teach democracy to leaders of the resistance movement.

In 1993, after receiving a master's degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Garcetti departed for Oxford. There he met Cory Booker, a fellow Rhodes scholar who is now the mayor of Newark, N.J., and a likely candidate for the U.S. Senate. Garcetti, Booker said, "was one of those guys who would be in the pub at midnight talking passionately about making a better world."

In England, Garcetti worked with Amnesty International and also met his future wife, Amy Wakeland, another Rhodes scholar with activist leanings. Garcetti remembers being impressed when Wakeland missed President Clinton's visit to the Rhodes House at Oxford because she was on the streets protesting tuition hikes. Her worldview aligned with his, he told friends.

In his second year at Oxford, Garcetti persuaded student leaders to join him in a hunger strike after the passage of Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot measure that denied immigrants access to state healthcare and schools.

Looking back, he sees the hunger strike as a bit of youthful folly. "We were young," Garcetti said. "Was a fast an ocean away going to overturn 187? No. But in my book, whether it's me in Los Angeles seeing an injustice across an ocean or vice versa, you have to stand up and be heard."

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Divergent views on illegal immigration emerge in state GOP

WASHINGTON — California's elected Republicans have long had a simple approach to illegal immigration: Those who broke the law coming here should leave.

But the confluence of politics and personal threat have now put many Republican legislators in Washington and Sacramento in a very different place: eager to embrace an overhaul of immigration laws and willing to consider legal status for some of the country's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants, 3 million of whom live in California.

In Sacramento and Washington, party orthodoxy is being defied. At least six GOP legislators in Sacramento have aligned themselves with Democrats to support a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally. Several congressional Republicans from California have said they would consider granting legal status to some illegal immigrants as part of a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

The issue, which has tormented California Republicans for a generation, is unlikely to be far from members' minds this weekend as the state party holds its spring convention in Sacramento.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona), who once declared himself "wholeheartedly against amnesty," is among those now willing to consider granting legal status to some illegal immigrants, under specific conditions.

"I have a number of people who say, 'hell no,' " said Calvert, whose district is 36% Latino. "But I have a lot more people who understand that we're not going to do mass deportations."

A number of California Republicans remain vehemently opposed to granting legal status to illegal immigrants or won't consider it until convinced that the border is secure.

"You've got to secure the border, and you've got to prove it's secure. Period. We'll talk after that," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine).

"There is a path to citizenship," added Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay.) "It's followed by millions of legal immigrants who have obeyed all of our laws."

The shift among others has been driven by recent election results and the expectation that Republicans' woeful trajectory in the state will not change without an alteration in the party's views.

In November, Republicans in Sacramento ceded a supermajority to Democrats in both houses of the California Legislature for the first time since 1883. At the same time, the number of Republicans in the state's 53-member House delegation dropped to 15, their lowest share since 1936, according to UC San Diego political scientist Gary Jacobson.

Barring a change, the future looks more bleak. The fastest-growing group of voters in the state are Latinos, whose voter registration has soared in the years since Republicans pushed 1994's Proposition 187, which would have banned government services to illegal immigrants. Latinos are expected to surpass whites to form a plurality of California's population by next year, according to state Department of Finance estimates, and Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo estimates that 23% of the state's registered voters are Latino. And they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

"The demographic changes are … irrefutable, and they require not just small message changes in the Republican Party but a tectonic shift," said Assemblyman Jeff Gorell (R-Camarillo), one of those who has broken with GOP orthodoxy. Gorell is among those who support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. He also supports granting them driver's licenses if they can document they have paid taxes in California, as proposed in legislation by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville).

Already the state's demographic shifts have cast an ominous shadow over some Republicans. Mary Bono Mack, a veteran Republican member of Congress seen as having statewide potential, was ousted from her Palm Springs district last year by a Latino Democrat, Raul Ruiz. And four of the state's 15 GOP members of Congress represent districts where Latinos make up 40% or more of the population; five represent districts at least 30% Latino, according to the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials Educational Fund.

"I'd not be truthful if I said that didn't have an impact," said Rep. John Campbell (R-Irvine).

Republicans also have come under pressure from interests in the Central Valley who back immigration measures that would allow a steady stream of farm workers. That area is home to many of the surviving Republican elected officials.

Nonetheless, some in the party dispute the notion that a change in policy is required. (The state party's platform asserts that "allowing illegal immigrants to remain in California undermines respect for the law.")

"I don't think pandering to a small group of people is going to help the Republican Party," said Celeste Greig, president of the California Republican Assembly, a grass-roots organization promoting conservative ideas within the party. "I don't think we should grant citizenship to people who blatantly came and broke the law."

California GOP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro also opposes measures that include a path to legalization. The country should secure the border before it considers what to do about residents who arrived illegally, Del Beccaro said.

Jim Brulte, the former Senate minority leader widely expected to be elected Sunday to replace Del Beccaro as chairman, has said the party needs to work harder to reach Latino voters. But Brulte declined to stake a position on the party's platform, saying his focus would be fundraising and rebuilding the organization's infrastructure.

richard.simon@latimes.com

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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How sequester cuts are made can be telling

WASHINGTON — Only days before the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman was due to leave Norfolk, Va., for the Persian Gulf this month, the Pentagon abruptly canceled the deployment, pleading poverty.

With cuts in the federal budget scheduled to take effect Friday, Pentagon officials said they feared that sending the carrier on a six-month cruise to the Middle East would empty their operations accounts.

President Obama on Tuesday alluded to the decision to hold back the Truman. "The threat of these cuts has forced the Navy to cancel the deployment," he said in a speech in southeastern Virginia, a few miles from the Norfolk naval base. He sought to lay the responsibility for the imminent cuts on Congress, adding that "only Congress has the power to pass a law that stops these damaging cuts and replaces them" with more sensible alternatives.

But on the same day that the Defense Department cuts are to begin, one of the Navy's newest vessels, the littoral combat ship Freedom, will set sail for Singapore on a long-planned, eight-month deployment, part of the Obama administration's emphasis on rebuilding the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, officials said.

The contrast between the Truman and the Freedom is a revealing reminder that, while the spending cuts, known as a sequester, will be far-reaching and in some cases severe, there is an element of gamesmanship in the way the administration portrays the effects.

As the White House looks to put Congress on the defensive for failing to move on a plan to halt the sequester, it's a powerful argument to blame the budget mechanism for blocking an aircraft carrier from the conflict-racked Middle East.

Similar high-profile cuts have begun to crop up elsewhere in the government. On Tuesday, administration officials announced that immigration authorities were releasing several hundred nonviolent detainees from holding facilities around the country. Because of the budget cuts, officials asserted, the government won't have enough money to hold all its 34,000 detainees. Officials say the released detainees are under other forms of supervision, including electronic and telephonic monitoring. Their cases continue to proceed in court.

Some defense officials and outside analysts say the Pentagon could have found the money to send the Truman to the Middle East, though it would have required the Navy to curtail other deployments and operations. Keeping the Truman home will save as much as $300 million, officials said.

All of the military services have spent the last month warning that they will be forced to curtail training hours and equipment maintenance for everyone other than forces in Afghanistan and South Korea. That will leave soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines not fully ready to fight if they're needed, officials warn.

But outside budget experts note that it is hard to assess the real effects of the sequester because the services have not disclosed much detail on the programs they are protecting from cuts.

"What they don't tell us is what the priorities are that they have protected," said Gordon Adams, a defense budget expert at American University who oversaw Pentagon budgeting during the Clinton administration.

The automatic budget cuts were required under a 2011 budget law, negotiated by Obama and Republican leaders, that set an across-the-board reduction in most programs if Congress failed to find other ways to trim the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the coming decade. The Pentagon faces a budget reduction of more than $40 billion through the end of September, and additional cuts would come in future years as long as the sequester remains in effect.

Each of the Pentagon's thousands of accounts — with a few exceptions including military pay and operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere — would be cut by as much as 15% in order to hold the base defense budget to $486 billion this year.

Some defense budget experts say the problem with the sequester is not the size of the cuts but the across-the-board way they are imposed, which prevents the Pentagon from cutting low-priority spending and preserving dollars for important priorities, such as military operations.

Over the last decade of two wars and constant deployments, the Pentagon has grown accustomed to ample budgets that rarely required such choices. But that era is drawing to an end.

Canceling the aircraft carrier's trip to the Middle East "is something they probably have been contemplating anyway," Todd Harrison, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Now they are trying to pin the blame on the sequester."

Obama ordered the Pentagon to keep two carriers in the Middle East in late 2011 in response to requests from top U.S. commanders, who wanted to beef up the U.S. presence amid rising tensions with Iran. But maintaining that presence became increasingly difficult after the number of deployable carriers in the fleet dropped to nine last year, Navy officials said.

Typically, three carriers are being overhauled or in training for every one that is deployed. With one permanently assigned to the Pacific, it would have been almost impossible to keep two carriers in the Middle East beyond next summer without severely stressing the force, said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the chief Navy spokesman.

Since the automatic cuts would not apply to contracts that have already been signed, most of the Pentagon weapons procurement programs would not be affected, at least initially.

But the longer the cuts remain in force, the more likely it would be that the Defense Department would have to further slow purchases of expensive weapons systems, such as the problem-plagued F-35 fighter, and cancel future weapons programs that run over budget, including Navy shipbuilding contracts and the Air Force's new KC-46 aerial refueling tanker.

Pentagon officials are asking for greater latitude to move money between accounts, but even that request faces skepticism from lawmakers worried about defending projects the Pentagon might like to cut.

"The effort is really going to focus on giving [the Defense Department] flexibility" to move money around, Harrison said.

david.cloud@latimes.com

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Garcetti holds potential interest in Beverly Hills oil drilling

In his bid for Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti has promoted himself as the greenest of candidates.

The city councilman from Silver Lake has pushed for an expansion of L.A.'s rooftop solar-panel program and the creation of thousands of clean-energy jobs, all to reduce the region's dependence on oil. Those positions helped Garcetti win the Sierra Club's endorsement.

Missing from Garcetti's environmental platform, however, is any hint that he has long stood to profit from a lease interest in a headline-making oil drilling operation: the wells run by Venoco Inc. at Beverly Hills High School.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

According to documents on file with the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office, Garcetti and several family members signed a 20-year lease with Venoco in 1998. It gave the company the subsurface drilling rights to a nearby Beverly Hills retail property that the councilman co-owns through a personal trust.

The lease enables Denver-based Venoco to tap oil and gas underneath the Wilshire Boulevard property by slant drilling from the high school about half a mile away.

The high school wells have been the target of some alumni, residents and environmentalists who allege the drilling has emitted dangerous levels of benzene.

Venoco insists the wells are safe and says it has taken no oil or gas from the Garcetti property in the 9600 block of Wilshire. Company spokeswoman Lisa Rivas said Venoco secured the lease in anticipation of extending its drilling to that part of Beverly Hills but does not know if the firm will follow through on the plans.

Garcetti spokesman Jeff Millman said the candidate "has no memory" of signing the lease. In response to Times queries, Millman said, Garcetti looked into the agreement and found that he earns just $1.25 from it per year.

"It's not really an issue," Millman said.

But Garcetti and several of his relatives who co-own the Wilshire property could collect royalties if Venoco began producing oil or gas from the parcel. Otherwise, they are paid nominal rental fees.

Millman said Garcetti would donate any royalties to the Sierra Club.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

Because the amount of money he has received to date is so small, Garcetti apparently has not been required to list the lease or the fees on his annual financial disclosure forms. It is unclear whether Garcetti has followed state and city disclosure rules for his ownership interest in the property.

When the lease was in its seventh year, Garcetti voted in favor of a 2005 council resolution opposing Venoco's efforts to increase its drilling offshore. At the time, he said in a statement that the ocean drilling "would harm the legacy that we're guarding for the generations that come after us," but he did not mention that he could benefit financially from Venoco's onshore wells.

Millman said the Wilshire property once housed a clothing store run by Garcetti's grandfather. It is now the site of a hair salon that pays rent to Garcetti and the relatives, including his sister and cousins, and his grandfather's trust, Millman said.

In general, state law requires disclosure of real estate holdings that are within two miles of a city office-holder's jurisdiction, said Gary Winuk, enforcement chief for the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The Beverly Hills property is within that distance of Los Angeles. For the most part, the city rules are similar to or stricter than the state's.

Garcetti specifically listed the property on his state and city forms from 2007 through 2009, reporting annual rental income from the hair salon in the broad category of between $10,000 and $100,000.

He omitted the property from the forms he filed in the years before and after that period.

Millman said Garcetti did not report it before 2007 because his advisors believed its location outside the Los Angeles city limits exempted it from disclosure.

Based on new advice, Millman said, Garcetti began reporting his interest in the property in 2007. But starting in 2010, he stopped disclosing it as a real estate holding. Instead, Garcetti listed his rental earnings from the hair salon as income from the Harry Roth Trust, named for his grandfather, believing that was the appropriate way to report the proceeds from the property, Millman said. He added that Garcetti's attorneys would review the filings to make sure they are correct.

The Sierra Club did not respond to requests for comment.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

In 2003, Venoco agreed to pay a fine and install monitoring equipment to settle pollution complaints from air quality officials. The wells were the subject of lawsuits brought that year by the firm of famed environmental advocate Erin Brockovich against Venoco and the city and school district of Beverly Hills, among others. The city and school district earn royalties from the wells.

The suits alleged that the wells had caused cancer in former students. The city and school district subsequently conducted tests that found no evidence of elevated emissions. A judge later dismissed the suits. As part of a settlement, the plaintiffs paid some of the legal fees incurred by the city and school district.

The debate over the wells died down, but the Beverly Hills City Council in 2011 adopted an anti-drilling ordinance that could stop Venoco's operations at the high school when its lease expires at the end of 2016.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

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Race for L.A. city controller heats up

A previously low-profile race for Los Angeles city controller has begun to heat up as opponents of City Councilman Dennis Zine accuse him of "double dipping" the city's payroll and question why he is considering lucrative tax breaks for a Warner Center developer.

Zine, who for 12 years has represented a district in the southeast San Fernando Valley, is the better known of the major candidates competing to replace outgoing Controller Wendy Greuel.

The others are Cary Brazeman, a marketing executive, and lawyer Ron Galperin. Zine has raised $766,000 for his campaign, more than double that of Galperin, the next-highest fundraiser, and has the backing of several of the city's powerful labor unions.

He also has been endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several of his council colleagues. Galperin is backed by the Service Employees International Union, one the city's largest labor groups, and Brazeman is supported by retired Rep. Diane Watson and several neighborhood council representatives.

With the primary ballot less than a week away, Brazeman and Galperin have turned up the heat on Zine, hoping to push the race beyond the March 5 vote. If no one wins more than 50% of the ballots cast, the top two vote-getters will face a runoff in the May general election.

In a recent debate, Zine's opponents criticized him for receiving a $100,000 annual pension for his 33 years with the Los Angeles Police Department and a nearly $180,000 council salary. Brazeman and Galperin called it an example of "double dipping" that should be eliminated.

That brought a forceful response from Zine, who shot back that he gives a big portion of his police pension check to charities.

"I am so tired of hearing 'double dipping,' " he said. "I worked 33 years on the streets of Los Angeles. I have given over $300,000 to nonprofits that need it.... That's what's happened with that pension."

In the same debate, Brazeman accused Zine of cozying up to a Warner Center developer by pushing for tax breaks on a project that already has been approved. The nearly 30-acre Village at Westfield Topanga project would add 1 million square feet of new shops, restaurants, office space and a hotel to a faded commercial district on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

"The councilman proposed to give developers at Warner Center tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks even though it's a highly successful project," he said. "He wants to give it away."

City records show that less than a month after the development was approved in February 2012, Zine asked the council for a study looking at possible "economic development incentives" that could be given to Westfield in return for speeding up street and landscaping enhancements to the project's exterior.

The motion's language notes that similar tax breaks have been awarded to large projects in the Hollywood and downtown areas, and that "similar public investment in the Valley has been lacking." Westfield is paying for the $200,000 study.

Zine defended his decision before the debate audience, saying if the study finds that the city will not benefit, no tax breaks will be awarded. "If there's nothing there, then they get nothing," Zine said.

The controller serves as a public watchdog over the city's $7.3-billion annual operation, auditing the general fund, 500 special fund accounts and the performance of city departments. Those audits often produce recommendations for reducing waste, fraud and abuse.

But the mayor and the council are not obligated to adopt those recommendations, and as a result the job is part accountant, part scolder in chief. All the candidates say they will use their elective position not only to perform audits but also to turn them into action.

Their challenge during the campaign has been explaining how they will do that.

Zine, 65, says his City Hall experience has taught him how to get things done by working with his colleagues. He won't be afraid to publicly criticize department managers, he said, but thinks collaboration works better than being combative.

"You can rant and rave and people won't work with you," he said. "Or you can sit down and talk it out, and you can accomplish things."

Galperin, 49, considers himself a policy wonk who relishes digging into the details to come up with ways to become more efficient with limited dollars and to find ways to raise revenue using the city's sprawling assets. For instance, the city owns two asphalt plants that could expand production and sell some of its material to raise money to fix potholes, he said.

He's served on two city commissions, including one that found millions of dollars in savings by detailing ways to be more efficient. Zine is positioning himself as a "tough guy for tough times," but the controller should be more than that, Galperin said.

"What we really need is some thoughtfulness and some smarts and some effectiveness," he said. "Just getting up there and saying we need to be tough is not going to accomplish what needs to be done."

Brazeman, 46, started his own marketing and public relations firm in West Los Angeles a decade ago and became active in city politics over his discontent with a development project near his home. He has pushed the council to change several initiatives over the last five years, including changes to the financing of the Farmers Field stadium proposal that will save taxpayer dollars, he said.

As controller, he would pick and choose his battles, and, Brazeman said, be "the right combination of constructive, abrasive and assertive."

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

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Bill would bar some athletes from California workers' comp claims

SACRAMENTO — Players for professional sports teams based outside of California would be barred from filing compensation claims for job-related injuries under proposed legislation supported by owners of football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer franchises.

A bill unveiled Monday by Assembly Insurance Committee Chairman Henry Perea (D-Fresno) would ban retired athletes from seeking workers' compensation benefits from California courts after they've played relatively few games in California stadiums and arenas during their careers.

The proposal, AB 1309, is expected to be one of the most hotly debated issues of the legislative session, with team owners lining up against the players' unions and their labor allies.

The bill, said Perea, is expected to be a "starting point" for a lively legislative debate over whether claims from out-of-state retired players represent abuse of the California workers' compensation system and wind up hitting all California employers with higher premiums and surcharges that pay for outstanding claims left by failed insurance companies.

"It's a question of fairness," Perea said.

Workers' compensation is 100% employer funded and does not depend on taxpayers' support.

The cost argument is phony, countered Richard Berthelsen, a consulting lawyer with the National Football League Players Assn. A prorated share of a team's workers' compensation bill is calculated into athletes' salary caps, so, in effect, they're paying for their own insurance coverage, Berthelsen contended. "They pay for their own benefits," he said.

Perea's bill would affect professional athletes from only the five big sports and not members of other professions whose work takes them from state to state, such as horse racing jockeys, truck drivers and salesmen. It would bar the filing of claims for cumulative trauma — caused by years of stress and pounding on a body rather than a broken bone or other specific injury — unless a player worked at least 90 days in California during the year prior to seeking benefits.

California is the only state that makes it relatively easy for long-retired players to claim cumulative trauma injuries. About 4,500 out-of-state players have won judgments or settlements since the early 1980s, according to a study commissioned by the professional sports leagues.

The bill, if it should become law, would apply to thousands of out-of-state athletes' claims currently pending before California workers' compensation judges.

Perea's legislation, by restricting benefits only for professional athletes, is potentially unfair, labor officials argued.

Regardless of whether they play for out-of-state teams, said Angie Wei, legislative director of the California Labor Federation, "these players are workers and they deserve to have access to their benefits. They work for short durations of time at an intense level and get injured."

marc.lifsher@latimes.com

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Despite stumbles, Baca named 'Sheriff of Year' by national group

For Sheriff Lee Baca, the last couple years have been rough.

His department is being investigated by the feds. A county commission examining abuse in Baca's jails found him to be disengaged and uninformed, saying he probably would have been fired in the private sector. Secret deputy cliques with gang-like hand signs and matching tattoos have surfaced. And Baca has been accused of using his office for the benefit of friends, relatives and donors.

Despite those challenges, Baca has been awarded "Sheriff of the Year" by the National Sheriffs' Assn.

His spokesman said the honor was appropriate given Baca is "the most progressive sheriff in the nation" and "a guy that works seven days a week."

"This is his best year because people do their best when they face their biggest challenges and he is excelling," said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Baca's critics disagreed.

"You gotta be kidding," said Peter Eliasberg, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California. "The years of malfeasance in the jails and the blatant failure of the sheriff to address the problems make his winning this award mind-boggling."

The association that picked Baca represents most of the sheriffs across the nation, with about 2,700 sheriffs as members, a spokesman said. About ten sheriffs were nominated for the award. A panel of former winners, current sheriffs and corporate sponsors chose Baca after reviewing the applications submitted for him and other nominees.

"It looks at what the sheriff has done in their own community but also what the sheriff has done to advance the office of sheriff nationally," said Fred Wilson, director of operations for the association. "Sheriff Baca certainly embodies that. He is an exemplary sheriff."

In announcing the award, the association cited Baca's record for providing educational opportunities for jail inmates and his efforts to reach out to various religious groups in the community. It also noted the vast size of the Sheriff's Department and the relatively low crime rates in the areas the department patrols.

"He commands the largest Sheriff's Office in the United States with a budget of $2.5 billion," the association wrote. "He leads nearly 18,000 sworn and professional staff ... the law enforcement providers for forty-two incorporated cities, 140 unincorporated communities, nine community colleges, and thousands of Metropolitan Transit Authority and Rapid Rail Transit District commuters."

Wilson said that although members of the panel focused on the application materials for each candidate, they were free to do their own research.

The recent headlines they would have found about Baca have not been flattering.

Current and former sheriff's supervisors went public with accounts of mismanagement. In addition to the FBI investigation of his jails, federal authorities launched a probe into allegations that Baca's deputies harassed minorities in the Antelope Valley and another investigation into one of Baca's captains, who was accused of helping an alleged drug trafficker.

Baca's department attracted more scrutiny following disclosures of a secret clique of elite gang deputies who sported matching tattoos and allegedly celebrated shootings. The sheriff has also been under fire for giving special treatment to friends and supporters, including launching "special" criminal investigations on behalf of two contributors. Although the homicide rate is at a historic low, recently released sheriff's statistics show serious crime increased 4.2% last year and all types of crime jumped 3%.

Most recently, The Times reported that Baca's nephew was hired to be a deputy despite a checkered past, and is now being investigated for allegedly abusing an inmate.

Last year, the sheriff announced a sweeping jail reform plan aimed at curbing abuses and improving accountability. An attorney monitoring Baca's progress for the county has given him high marks so far.

"Sheriff Baca doesn't step down, he steps up," Whitmore added.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

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Mike Piazza softens stance on Dodgers' Vin Scully

PHOENIX—

— Calling Vin Scully "a class act" and saying he had "the utmost respect" for him, Mike Piazza on Monday defended what he wrote in his recently released autobiography about the Hall of Fame broadcaster.

In his book, "Long Shot," Piazza described Scully as instrumental in turning the fans of Los Angeles against him during the contract stalemate that led to his trade to the Florida Marlins in 1998. Piazza wrote that Scully "was crushing me" on the air, a charge Scully vehemently denied.

"I can't say that I have regrets," Piazza said. "I was just trying to explain the situation."

The former All-Star catcher was at the Dodgers' spring-training facility with Italy's World Baseball Classic team, for which he is a coach. Scully was also at the complex, to call the Dodgers' 7-6 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

"I'd love to see him," Piazza said.

The two didn't meet.

"I always liked him," Scully said. "I admired him. I think either he made a mistake or got some bad advice. I still think of him as a great player and I hope he gets into the Hall of Fame. I really do. Whatever disappointment I feel, I'll put aside."

Scully declined to comment further on Piazza or his book.

Piazza complimented Scully as he tried to defend what he wrote.

"Vin is a class act; he's an icon," Piazza said. "To this day, I have the utmost respect for him. But the problem is, you have to go back in time and understand that at that point in time in my career with the Dodgers was a very tumultuous time. I was more or less telling my version of the story, at least what I was experiencing. And I said at the end of the book, it's not coming from a place of malice or anger. I think anybody who remembers that time knows it was a very tumultuous time."

Piazza said his intent wasn't to blame Scully.

"I don't think anybody who read the passage from start to finish felt that way," Piazza said. "Anybody who reads it knows it wasn't me blaming. That was definitely not the only factor. There were other factors. The team made the mistake, I made the mistake, of speaking publicly."

Piazza acknowledged that he never heard Scully's broadcasts and that his impressions of them were based on what he heard from others.

"My perception was that he was given the Dodgers' versions of the negotiations, which, I feel, wasn't 100% accurate," Piazza said.

In his book, Piazza also took issue with how Scully asked him about his contract demands during a spring-training interview. Piazza said Monday that he was "taken aback" by the line of questioning because he previously hadn't talked publicly about the negotiations.

To reach the practice fields at Camelback Ranch on Monday, Piazza had to pass through a gantlet of Dodgers fans. Piazza said he wasn't nervous.

"I did a book signing a couple of weeks ago in Pasadena and the fans were really nice," he said.

Piazza denied that he hadn't returned to Dodger Stadium in recent years out of fear of being booed, as Tom Lasorda told The Times last month.

Piazza said he always associated the Dodgers with the O'Malley family, which sold the team to News Corp. in 1998.

"Since then, obviously, they've taken on a different identity," Piazza said.

Piazza was noncommittal about visiting the ballpark in the future. "We'll see," he said. "I'll never say never."

Wouldn't it be harder to return now that his portrayal of Scully has upset fans?

"I don't know," he said. "I can't answer that."

Piazza also spoke about falling short of being elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

"I definitely couldn't lie and say I wasn't a little disappointed," he said.

He is hopeful he will one day be inducted. "I trust the process," he said.

Piazza wouldn't say whether he thought Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens deserved to be in the Hall of Fame. Both players, who have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs, also were denied election.

Piazza has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has never faced detailed allegations that he did. Asked if he was upset that the indiscretions of others might have altered others' perceptions of him, he replied, "Unfortunately, that's the way life is sometimes. I can't control and worry about what people think."

dylan.hernandez@latimes.com

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Glendale schools increasing security

Glendale Unified School District officials have announced plans to bolster security measures at campuses districtwide.

At a school board meeting last week, officials said they plan to equip all schools with security cameras. Reception areas at all 30 campuses will also get "panic buttons" that make direct emergency calls to 911 with a single push, said Alan Reising, an administrator of district facilities.

Officials also want to create a single entry point at all elementary schools.

The districtwide security discussion began after the mid-December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and six adults dead before the shooter took his own life.

Glendale Unified has had its own scares in recent months

In late December, a man was arrested after allegedly simulating firing a weapon at passing cars outside Glenoaks Elementary School. No weapons were found on the man.

In early January, an anonymous caller phoned in a bomb threat to R.D. White Elementary, prompting the evacuation of 880 students. The campus was eventually cleared, and no arrest has been made.

"Unfortunately, we've also had some real-life experiences," said Assistant Supt. Katherine Fundukian Thorossian. "We've learned lessons through it."

Glendale school officials have since coordinated with city officials and police on school security policies.

"I think on a daily basis, if we stay ready, then we don't have to get ready," Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz told the school board Tuesday.

Glendale police have the floor plans for each school', he added.

"If something goes down, we know how we're going to get in and we know how we're going to get out," Lorenz said.

kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

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California GOP faces steep road back

SACRAMENTO — The Republican Party has become so pathetic in California that it can't even find a candidate to run for governor next year.

Correct that. It isn't even looking. Wouldn't know where to begin.

The party's in no position to recruit anyway. It has little to offer. Certainly not a brand name, not in a state where the GOP steadily has been losing market share. Definitely not money. The party's deep in debt.

Actually, neither major party historically has had to recruit top-of-ticket candidates. They're usually lined up begging, jockeying for position to win the party's nomination.

Republicans will hold a state convention next weekend in Sacramento. Normally, there'd be a parade of gubernatorial wannabes fighting for the mike and opening up hospitality suites during the silly hours. But not this time.

This convention apparently will have all the excitement of a Saturday at the dump. The big event will be the election of a former Republican legislative leader, Jim Brulte, as the new state chairman.

Brulte wants to rebuild the party from the ground up. That includes recruiting local candidates and building a farm system for major office.

But no one can name a Republican who would have a snowball's chance of beating Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown next year — at least someone who might run.

The name of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice always is tossed out. But everyone concedes that's fantasy. She's committed to education reform, a Brown vulnerability. She loves her life in academia at Stanford, however, and shuns smelly state politics.

Another name is U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, the Republican whip. As a former Assembly GOP leader, he understands Sacramento and perhaps could make it work. But he's not going to surrender his No. 3 party leadership post in Congress.

One big red flag for any Republican is Brown's remarkable strength. He seems practically unbeatable in his expected quest for a record fourth term as governor. (In October, he'll surpass Gov. Earl Warren's record for years served in the office.)

A Field Poll last week showed that Brown's job approval rating among voters has risen to an eye-popping 57%. Moreover, 61% said he "can be trusted to do what is right." And 56% thought he "deserves credit for turning around the state's finances."

But — pointing to some weakness — 57% also said that Brown "advocates too many big-government projects that the state cannot afford" (bullet train). And 47% said he "favors organized labor too much" (public pensions).

So there are some sores for opponents to peck away at. And, after all, he will be 76.

Brown probably can't be bounced from office, however. So forget about trying to find a Republican winner. Just settle for a credible candidate who can pass the laugh test.

Ideally, the candidate would be someone relatively young who runs on the high road — avoiding the gutter — and finishes in position to wage a successful encore race when Brown gets booted by term limits in 2018.

Being a Latino could be a plus, attracting voters from a growing ethnic group that has been repulsed by what it perceives as GOP immigrant bashing.

But who? Remember we're not looking for electability. What's needed is credibility — to carry the colors without embarrassing the party.

That excludes one legislator who has expressed interest, Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino County. He's a former Minuteman who rails against illegal immigration and was placed on probation for trying to bring a loaded firearm onto an airplane. He called it an "honest mistake."

"He'd be a really horrible candidate, worse than no candidate," says Republican analyst Tony Quinn.

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Airlines get early jump on fare hikes in 2013

When a trade group for corporate travel managers recently predicted airfares would rise in 2013, the group probably didn't expect the hikes to be launched so quickly.

Domestic airfares are expected to jump 4.6% in 2013, while international rates will probably rise 8.3%, according to a survey of travel managers by the GBTA Foundation, an arm of the Global Business Travel Assn.

The group attributed the increase to rising demand from companies ready to take advantage of new business opportunities in a strengthening economy.

Only a week after the group issued its prediction, Delta Air Lines Inc., the nation's second-largest air carrier, initiated a fare hike of $4 to $10, specifically designed to hit business travelers who book within seven days of their flight.

By the end of last week, every major carrier had matched Delta's increase, according to FareCompare, a website that keeps track of such hikes. JetBlue Airways Corp. expanded the hike to include flights booked beyond the seven-day period.

The increase is the first of 2013 to take hold.

If the past is any indication, expect to see new hikes every two months or so. In 2012, the nation's major airlines adopted seven hikes out of 15 attempts.

For hotel guests, water pressure is key concern

Despite all the money and effort hotels put into selecting comfortable beds and soft pillows, a new study suggests that hotel guests are more likely to choose a hotel based on the water pressure in the shower.

A Boston marketing and public relations company has analyzed what people say about hotels by studying more than 18,000 online conversations for a six-month period on various social websites, blogs and forums.

The company, Brodeur Partners, used for the first time what it calls "conversational relevance" to measure how much people talk about a hotel and how much of it is positive.

What do they say?

When it came to positive overall comments, the Hilton, Marriott and Four Seasons hotel chains got the highest scores in the study.

Conversations about the rooms centered around the size, followed by discussions about connectivity and technology, the study found. When guests had conversations about what they like to see or feel in the room, most of the talk was about the shower, specifically the water pressure, surpassing talk about the bed or the sheets.

Jerry Johnson, head of planning for Brodeur Partners, said the advantage of analyzing online conversations is that "you are measuring behavior. You are hearing real honest conversations."

Hotels, he said, may respond to the study by improving whatever hotel feature guests are saying is lacking, perhaps even installing new shower heads.

Hotel chain responds to online reviews

About three years ago, the economy hotel chain Red Roof Inn tested out a new in-room feature in its Columbus, Ohio, hotel.

In addition to installing outlets near the desks in the rooms, the hotel added several outlets on the nightstand so travelers could keep their portable devices charging near the bed.

By monitoring comments on the travel review website TripAdvisor, the hotel chain found that the extra plugs were a big hit with travelers. The hotel decided to install them throughout the chain.

"It's a simple thing but it's extremely meaningful to the traveler," hotel chain President Andy Alexander said.

For the third year in a row, Red Roof Inn recently earned the highest customer satisfaction score among economy hotels in an analysis by Market Metrix, a San Francisco Bay Area hotel market research company.

Alexander attributes the chain's high score to its efforts to follow and respond to online reviews.

It's because of guest comments, he said, that Red Roof has tried other improvements, such as installing wood floors in the rooms and vessel sinks in the bathrooms.

What's next? Alexander said the hotel chain offers free wireless Internet to all guests but might consider offering higher speed Wi-Fi to members of its loyalty program.

"You can't stand still," he said.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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Neither side blinks in federal budget standoff

WASHINGTON — The nation's budget solution was never supposed to look like this: Congress and the White House staring at across-the-board spending cuts that will begin slashing indiscriminately through the federal government in a matter of days.

Each side had expected cooler heads to prevail, assuming the other would set aside its political preferences and compromise to prevent the economic problems that are widely expected from a sudden reduction in the flow of federal funds.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) believed that President Obama was so fearful of deep reductions to domestic programs that the White House would yield to Republican demands. Instead, Obama has stuck to his insistence that wealthier Americans and corporations must contribute more in taxes as part of any solution to the country's long-term debt problems.

The White House figured Republicans would be the ones to blink. The party's opposition to defense cuts would force Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to yield and accept at least some additional taxes rather than go ahead with the automatic cuts, known as a sequester, Democrats believed.

Both sides severely miscalculated.

Now the cuts that both said would never happen are only days away. With some of the largest government programs, including Medicaid and Social Security, fully walled off from the cuts, and Medicare only partially exposed, the reductions in other federal accounts work out to about 13% for defense and 9% for domestic spending for the rest of this year, according to the government's Office of Management and Budget.

At first, the public likely will not notice huge changes. Many furlough notices for federal workers take at least 30 days to kick in, for example, and the effect on other programs will vary in timing.

Longer waits at airports likely will be seen relatively quickly as the Transportation Security Administration reduces its spending, but cuts in federal education aid may not lead to teachers losing their jobs until the new school year starts in the fall, administration officials have said.

Economists, though, have warned that pulling some $85 billion in federal spending from the economy this year likely will shave economic growth enough to cost about 750,000 jobs.

As the two sides jockey for political advantage, both will be watching to see how the public reacts to the cuts. A Pew Research Center poll released Friday showed that although the public supports the idea of deficit reduction in general, Americans oppose most suggestions for cutting specific government programs.

Because the effects will unspool over time, this latest budget showdown may last longer than those of the past.

Once the cuts take effect March 1, the next deadline facing Congress is not until March 27, when lawmakers will need to reach agreement on funding the routine operations of the government or risk a full shutdown. In the meantime, the cuts will work their way through the federal system.

"What you're seeing on a broader level is inertia working in favor of spending reductions — for a change," said Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, a tea-party-aligned Republican. "We're fighting on our playing field."

This week, the Senate will probably consider two proposals for temporarily averting the cuts — one offered by Democrats and backed by the White House, the other offered by Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and designed to preserve defense spending. Partisan loyalty will probably prevent either from reaching the needed 60 votes.

As Mulvaney's words indicate, many House Republicans see the cuts as their best chance to achieve spending reductions that they feel have slipped away in previous budget deals. They made a tactical decision last month to push ahead on the issue, despite divisions in their ranks, particularly over defense, and the risk that the public will dislike the cuts and blame them.

"Republicans are saying: We need to put the cuts on the board," said GOP strategist David Winston, who is close to the House Republican leadership. "We need to start talking about how we deal with this spending problem."

But the Republican message has been a mixed one. They are taking credit for forcing the spending cuts, which are projected to reduce deficits by a total of $1 trillion over the next decade. At the same time, they insist the cuts are bad and have blamed Obama for creating them — GOP leadership aides have taken to calling the sequester the "Obamaquester."

Obama, by contrast, has employed a consistent strategy of denouncing the cuts as indiscriminate and blaming them on Republican intransigence. In recent days, he has turned up the volume with campaign-style appearances. The strategy may not produce legislative results, but could prove valuable in influencing voters.

Polls last week showed that significant majorities of Americans already were inclined to blame the GOP and disagree with their cuts-only approach to balancing the budget. In the Pew survey, for example, 79% of Americans said that further tax increases should be at least part of the long-term budget solution.

White House officials don't think their sharp rhetoric will cost them much goodwill on Capitol Hill. Even if they could negotiate a compromise with Republican leaders, they believe, Boehner would be unable to sell it to the party's members in the House.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a veteran GOP strategist, acknowledged the "very challenging" message his party is trying to deliver in the face of a determined White House and his party's low approval ratings.

"It's not going to be particularly comfortable, but I think it's something Republicans are pretty insistent on," he said. "The president and his political team think they can intimidate Republicans — it's not going to happen."

Democrats believe they have the upper hand because the cuts will grow increasingly unpopular.

"The reality is going to hit at some point, and the reality is going to be, there are very deep and immediate cuts," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. Republicans, he predicts, will find themselves in an untenable position. "The choice is very simple: whether they'd rather protect special-interest tax loopholes or national security and jobs."

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

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As a new pope is chosen, Latin America hopes for more sway

MEXICO CITY — They represent the region with more Roman Catholics than any other. And their to-do list for the next pope is a long one.

Next month, 19 cardinals from Latin America will be among the 117 from around the world expected to be eligible to participate in the secret meetings to choose a replacement for Pope Benedict XVI.

And though the chances for a Latin American pope being elected are a long shot, regional leaders are hoping to have more influence than before both in the selection process and in addressing many of the major problems facing the church in general and Latin America specifically.

Among them: the growing secularism and corruption of faith that Benedict so frequently complained of and the church's sex abuse scandals, involving clerics in Mexico, Chile and Brazil.

Issues of particular concern for Latin America include the evangelical religious faith that has been rapidly siphoning off church members and the lack of fervor for the current pope.

"Latin Americans have for a very long time felt they should get more say in choices and policy decisions; they feel that because of their size, they should have more influence at the Vatican," said Margaret E. Crahan, an expert on the church at Columbia University's Institute of Latin American Studies. "But the Europeans still dominate."

Many Latin American Catholics never warmed completely to Benedict, in part because of his terse style and in some cases because of his conservative ideology. He remained a distant, rigid figure to many, despite two high-profile visits to the region, and they speak now of hope for a new pope who would be more personable and accessible.

The next pope "will have to take the church from this image of paralysis … and find a clear, agile way to preach the Gospel," said Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City, the world's largest.

Contrary to popular opinion, and perhaps wishful thinking, cardinals who gather in the Sistine Chapel for the pope-choosing conclave are not believed to generally vote in geographic blocs. Latin American cardinals, like their counterparts the world over, tend to seek guidance from members of their same order, peers worldwide who are friends, and, especially, cardinals based in Rome who are most familiar with the workings of the Vatican and in the best position to promote or thwart contenders.

In the last conclave, in 2005, the Latin American delegation failed to rally behind a single candidate. Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani of Peru probably looked to the only other Opus Dei cardinal, Julian Herranz of Spain. There were reports of a last-minute surge by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, a Jesuit who also had strong conservative credentials and who would have drawn support from two groups that at times are at odds, but not in the numbers needed.

The church hierarchy in Latin America has also become much more conservative in recent decades. Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, left a distinct mark on the church in this region, cracking down on dissent and replacing liberal prelates with conservatives. Much of that policy was aimed at stemming the pro-left liberation theology movement that began to spread in Latin America in the 1960s and '70s and at bringing the clergy and laity back into line with orthodox teaching.

The result today for many Catholic worshipers in Latin America — though certainly not all — is a church hierarchy out of step with their pressing daily problems. Some still hanker for the more progressive activism that was nurtured by liberation theologists. Moreover, despite their overall moral and theological conservatism, the "princes" of the church do not speak in one voice, depending on the internal dynamics of each country; for some, issues of social justice do remain a priority, while others must deal with violence or other overarching challenges.

The reputation of the church in Latin America was badly hurt by sex abuse scandals, mostly notoriously the case of the late Father Marcial Maciel, the once-revered Mexican founder of an ultra-conservative religious congregation known as the Legion of Christ. Maciel was a favorite of the Vatican and especially of John Paul before it was revealed that he had sexually abused seminarians for decades, fathered at least three children by two or more women and was a drug addict. Benedict finally removed him from duties in 2006 shortly before his death and ordered the organization overhauled.

The Maciel case cast a pall over Benedict's pilgrimage to central Mexico last year, when abuse victims and their supporters staged competing events and demanded a meeting with the pontiff. Although Benedict has conferred with sexual abuse victims in some of his voyages, he did not do so in Mexico. It is not clear whether the conservative local church hierarchy, some of whose senior members had also protected Maciel for years, made the petition known to the Holy See.

In Mexico and Brazil, two of the three Latin American countries where Benedict has set foot — the other was Cuba — the mood last weekend seemed to overwhelmingly favor a different kind of pope.

"The church needs renewal," Edson Jose de Souza, 43, who runs a glass business, said outside the Nossa Senhora de Fatima e Santo Amaro church in the Brazilian beach town of Guaruja. Mass was packed, with worshipers in surf wear and older couples fanning themselves, all spilling out into the street from the chapel.

"Over the last few decades we've suffered huge losses of the faithful to other religions, especially the evangelical churches. We need to rescue them," said De Souza, who is a member of the Catholic Charismatic Renovation movement, a lively current that has arisen in Brazil to challenge the appeal of the raucous evangelical services.

On the western outskirts of Mexico City, at the Santa Rosa de Lima church in a working-class parish, many of the faithful expressed similar misgivings.

"With all the problems the church has, if they don't do something it will seriously decline," said Refugio Bonilla, a 39-year-old teacher. "We believers will always be here, because we have faith and that's how we were taught. But the new generations, they are losing interest."

At the upscale San Agustin Church (where the son of the world's richest man got married two years ago), in Mexico City's affluent Polanco neighborhood, Alexia Alvarez, 26, was joining a steady parade of worshipers filing in for Mass. She wore surgical scrubs from the hospital where she works as a gynecologist.

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Paroled sex offenders disarming tracking devices

SACRAMENTO — Thousands of paroled child molesters, rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in California are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking devices — and some have been charged with new crimes including sexual battery, kidnapping and attempted manslaughter.

The offenders have discovered that they can disable the monitors, often with little risk of serving time for it, a Times investigation has found. The jails are too full to hold them.

"It's a huge problem," said Fresno parole agent Matt Hill. "If the public knew, they'd be shocked."

More than 3,400 arrest warrants for GPS tamperers have been issued since October 2011, when the state began referring parole violators to county jails instead of returning them to its packed prisons. Warrants increased 28% in 2012 compared to the 12 months before the change in custody began. Nearly all of the warrants were for sex offenders, who are the vast majority of convicts with monitors, and many were for repeat violations.

The custody shift is part of Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature's "realignment" program, to comply with court orders to reduce overcrowding in state prisons. But many counties have been under their own court orders to ease crowding in their jails.

Some have freed parole violators within days, or even hours, of arrest rather than keep them in custody. Some have refused to accept them at all.

Before prison realignment took effect, sex offenders who breached parole remained behind bars, awaiting hearings that could send them back to prison for up to a year. Now, the maximum penalty is 180 days in jail, but many never serve that time.

With so little deterrent, parolees "certainly are feeling more bold," said Jack Wallace, an executive at the California Sex Offender Management Board.

Rithy Mam, a convicted child stalker, was arrested three times in two months after skipping parole and was freed almost immediately each time. After his third release, his GPS alarm went off and he vanished, law enforcement records show.

The next day, he turned up in a Stockton living room where a 15-year-old girl was asleep on the couch, police said. The girl told police she awoke to find the stranger staring at her and that he asked "Wanna date?" before leaving the home.

Police say Mam went back twice more that week and menaced the girl and her 13-year-old sister, getting in by giving candy to a toddler, before authorities recaptured him in a local park. He is in custody on new charges of child molestation.

Californians voted in 2006 to require that high-risk sex offenders be tracked for life with GPS monitors strapped to their bodies.

The devices are programmed to record offenders' movements and are intended, at least in part, to deter them from committing crimes. The devices, attached to rubber ankle straps embedded with fiber-optic cable, transmit signals monitored by a private contractor.

They are easy to cut off, but an alarm is triggered when that happens, as it is when they are interfered with in other ways or go dead, or when an offender enters a forbidden area such as a school zone or playground. The monitoring company alerts parole agents by text message or email.

Arrest warrants for GPS tamperers are automatically published online. The Times reviewed that data as well as thousands of jail logs, court documents and criminal histories provided by confidential sources. The records show that the way authorities handle violators can vary significantly by county.

San Bernardino County releases more inmates early from its cramped jails than any other county in California, according to state reports. But sex offenders who violate parole there generally serve their terms. A spokeswoman said the county closely reviews criminal histories, and those with past sex offenses are ineligible for early release.

By contrast, parole violators in San Joaquin County are often set free within a day of arrest.

A review of the county's jail logs shows that nine of the 15 sex offenders arrested for violating parole in December and January were let out within 24 hours, including seven who immediately tampered with their trackers and disappeared. One of the nine, a convicted rapist named Robert Stone, was arrested two weeks later on kidnapping charges and returned to jail, where he remains.

Raoul Leyva, a sex offender with a history of beating women, was arrested in April for fleeing parole and ordered to remain jailed for 100 days. He was out in 16 days and soon bolted again, after allowing the battery on his device to go dead, according to the documents reviewed by The Times.

Less than two weeks later, a drug dealer led police to a Stockton apartment where Leyva's girlfriend, 20-year-old Brandy Arreola, had lain for days on the floor, severely beaten and in a coma. Now brain damaged and confined to a wheelchair, Arreola spends her time watching cartoons.

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'Great 9th' may lose more of its African American political clout

Los Angeles reached a benchmark half a century ago when the City Council's first African American was appointed to represent the area then known as South Central.

Gilbert Lindsay, a former cotton field worker and city janitor, was chosen in 1963 to fill a vacant seat in the 9th Council District, which covered part of South Los Angeles. The appointment helped make "The Great 9th," as Lindsay took to calling it, a hub of black political clout.

Two generations later, with the seat open and the March 5 election approaching, the area that gave birth to historic South Central Avenue and the city's black middle-class culture has a far different political landscape. It is nearly 80% Latino. Tiendas and carnicerias line its boulevards. And for the first time since the hard-fought gains of the civil rights movement, voters in the coming months could elect a council member who is not black.

What that might mean, and whether it matters, has been a whispered topic in the campaign to replace Councilwoman Jan Perry, who is leaving after 12 years.

Some point to U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson, an African American lawmaker who represented south Los Angeles County and lost her seat last year to Democrat Janice Hahn, who is white. If no black candidate wins in the 9th, it will be "powerful blow" to the existing black power base, said Dermot Givens, who has worked on campaigns of African American candidates for two decades.

"For the black community, [the loss of a black council seat] is the bad medicine they'll have to swallow to get to reality and help themselves," he said. "Because the reality is, we've lost a lot of political power."

For decades, African Americans have held on to three of the council's 15 seats, even as the black population declined. With Perry running for mayor, the field of possible replacements is composed of three Latinos, three African Americans and a Japanese American, each of whom is trying to reach across racial lines.

Latinos are the overwhelming majority of residents, but African Americans still make up more than 40% of the district's voters, according to data provided by Perry's office. That means a black candidate in the district "needs to be very attuned to the Latino community and vice versa," said Raphael Sonenshein, head of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

That's evident on the campaign trail. Former council aide Ana Cubas, whose family is from El Salvador, frequently highlights her support from former Councilwoman Rita Walters, who is African American and succeeded Lindsay. Former state Assemblyman Mike Davis, who is black, talks up his promotion of a Salvadoran stretch of Vermont Avenue.

Schoolteacher Ron Gochez, who is both Mexican and Central American, points to his work with Latin American and African American students in the heart of the district. And Deputy Police Chief Terry Hara, who is third-generation Japanese American, has touted his endorsement from Connie Rice, an African American and one of the city's most prominent civil rights advocates.

The cross-cultural efforts have produced awkward moments. At a candidate forum last week, state Sen. Curren Price, who is African American, welcomed the audience with a genial buenas tardes, or good afternoon or evening. Since it was around 10:30 a.m., some in the crowd laughed.

The candidates largely describe race as incidental to the election, saying voters in the working-class district simply want someone to bring in jobs, fix sidewalks, pave streets and get a handle on illegal dumping. "They're not looking for a black candidate or a Latino candidate," said Price, whose Senate district stretches from Watts to Century City. "I think they're more sophisticated than that."

Still, candidate Manny Aldana said he has heard voters specifically bring up the topic of ethnicity and mention that "it would be great to be represented by a Hispanic or a Latino." "I say it's not about that," he said. "I'm asking them to vote for me because I've lived here the longest, longer than any other candidate."

Curtis Andrews, a 52-year-old handyman who is African American, said he's witnessed the area's demographic transformation firsthand. He understands why some of his Latino friends say they're more likely to vote for a Latino candidate.

"You want to vote for someone you can connect with," he said.

Others said race is irrelevant to the election. "The people who vote may be different races now," said James McCowan, 24, an eight-year resident of South Angeles. "But that doesn't mean they don't want the same things."

Last summer, council President Herb Wesson told a group of black ministers that if they came together "as a people," they could replace Perry with "someone who looks like you, who looks like me." Wesson, the council's first black president, has since endorsed Price.

Since then, a surge of special-interest money has been spent on Price's behalf. But the candidate who has raised the most for his campaign is Hara, who has worked three decades in South Los Angeles as an LAPD officer. Hara, 55, stresses his ethnic roots, referring to the time his parents spent in a World War II internment camp. He is upbeat about his chances, even though a tiny fraction of the district is Asian.

"I'm extremely encouraged by the warmth I've received when I've knocked on doors," he said.

Not far behind Hara in the money chase is Cubas, who describes herself as a child of immigrants living the American dream. Cubas was chief of staff to Councilman Jose Huizar last year when the council stripped much of downtown, and its wealth, from the 9th District, moving it into Huizar's territory. With redistricting a sensitive subject on the campaign trail, Cubas has portrayed herself as a minor player in the decision.

Other candidates span the spectrum. Gochez is a self-described socialist who fought the LAPD's practice of impounding cars belonging to illegal immigrants. Davis, a lifelong Democrat, has been walking precincts with U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, an influential South Los Angeles leader. Former council aide David Roberts, who is African American, has key ties to the business community.

At a candidate forum last week, Roberts said the district's issues revolve around class and quality of life, not race. "It's about 40% unemployment, about not having a grocery store ... and other services," he said.

Gochez, 31, accused his opponents of glossing over persistent black-brown tensions that he's sought to address with his high school students. "A majority of people want to get along and a majority of people do get along," he said. "But unfortunately tensions do exist, and we're trying to combat them."

david.zahniser@latimes.com

Times staff writer Laura J. Nelson contributed to this report.

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California lawmaker Rubio leaves Legislature for Chevron job

SACRAMENTO — State Sen. Michael J. Rubio, who was leading the Legislature's effort to make California's environmental laws more business-friendly, abruptly resigned from office Friday to accept a government-affairs job with Chevron Corp.

Rubio, a Democrat from Shafter, in the Central Valley, was chairman of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee and introduced bills during his two years in office that related to the oil industry in his district.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission will conduct a routine review of Rubio's move to make sure it involves no violation of the conflict-of-interest rules in California's Political Reform Act.

"We will look to see if there is something to indicate that the act was violated and, if so, we will take a look at it," said the commission's chief of enforcement, Gary Winuk.

Rubio said in an interview that he has complied with state law, and he declined to discuss the terms of his employment. He said he quit the Legislature because he had tired of the 300-mile drive from his district to the Capitol and has a special-needs daughter who requires attention.

"My family comes first," he said.

One of Rubio's bills would have clarified state codes to allow the practice of re-injecting natural gas as part of oil drilling. The 2011 measure, which stalled in a committee, was backed by the Western States Petroleum Assn., a group whose members include Chevron Corp.

In November, Rubio was among a group of legislators who went on a trip to Brazil that was paid for by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, a nonprofit bankrolled by Chevron, PG&E and other firms. Sponsors sent representatives to accompany the lawmakers as they studied Brazil's low-carbon fuel standards and other issues.

In spearheading the push for streamlined environmental laws, Rubio worked closely with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, whose members include Chevron Energy Solutions.

It is common for lawmakers to move into high-level jobs or consulting arrangements with interests that sought their help in shaping state policy. Rubio's announcement renewed complaints about the practice from watchdog groups.

Jamie Court, president of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, said the revolving door between the public and private sector always raises questions of whether politicians spend their time in office "auditioning for a well-paying job for the companies they are supposed to regulate."

Rubio's departure creates a third vacancy in the 40-person Senate that will temporarily put its Democrats' numbers below the supermajority they won in November.

Two Democrats had previously left for Congress, and special elections are being held in coming weeks for their seats. Both are widely expected to remain in Democratic hands, because the party has a comfortable registration advantage in those districts.

A special election will be called to fill Rubio's seat.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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Genetically modified foods: Who has to tell?

Consumers who believe they have a right to know whether their food contains genetically modified ingredients are pressing lawmakers, regulators and voters to require labels on altered foods. But even if they succeed, experts say there's no guarantee that labels identifying genetically engineered foods would ever appear on packages.

"People are usually surprised to learn that there is no legal right to know," said Michael Rodemeyer, an expert on biotechnology policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

A variety of rules and regulations control the words that appear on food packages. Such rules must be balanced against companies' constitutionally protected right of commercial speech, experts said.

"It's an unsettled area in the law," said Hank Greely, director of the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences in Palo Alto. "If I were a betting man, I think the odds are good that the Supreme Court would ... strike down a GMO labeling requirement."

Consumers do have the right to know some things about foods, and it's the job of the Food and Drug Administration to enforce the various rules. Labels must carry an accurate name for the food, as well as its weight and manufacturer, a list of ingredients and, since 1990, that panel of calories and breakdown of basic nutrients that some people pore over and others blithely ignore.

And labels cannot be false or misleading. Consumers have a right to know that a product contains the nutrients they'd reasonably expect to find in a food with that name: An orange lacking vitamin C (should anyone desire to create such a thing) would have to be labeled as such.

They also have the right to know when a food contains something new that makes it materially different, such as an allergen or unexpected nutrient. Soybean varieties that are genetically engineered to contain high amounts of the monounsaturated fat oleic acid must bear labels that make that property clear, said FDA spokesperson Morgan Liscinsky.

But there is no requirement that food producers use those labels to say how they raised those oleic acid levels, according to the FDA. They could have done it through conventional breeding or by irradiating plant tissue to create mutations or by fusing cells together in a dish — or with genetic engineering.

When Flavr Savr tomatoes became the first genetically modified plants sold in supermarkets in 1994, they had stickers that informed shoppers that they were "made from genetically engineered seeds." Calgene Inc., the company that produced the tomatoes, even provided brochures and a toll-free number that consumers could call to learn more about the product, said Belinda Martineau, a geneticist at UC Davis who worked at Calgene in the 1990s.

But those labels were there only because Calgene decided to put them there. The FDA had scrutinized the process by which the company engineered the DNA in the tomatoes and decided that the technology itself didn't amount to a material change. Regulators concluded that Flavr Savr had the appearance, nutrients, flavor and texture of a tomato (although not, as it turned out, an especially tasty one).

"It was still a tomato," said Fred Degnan, a food lawyer with the firm King & Spalding in Washington, D.C., who has worked on biotechnology and labeling issues at the FDA. "They couldn't require it to be labeled in a way that implied it was different from a regular tomato."

Courts have ruled that forcing companies to label GM products violates their 1st Amendment right of free speech. In a 1996 case, a federal appeals court blocked a Vermont law that required dairy producers to label milk from cows that had been treated with a growth hormone made by genetically engineered bacteria. The hormone helped cows produce more milk, but the milk itself was the same as milk from untreated cows, the FDA determined. Because the law required labels to contain information that wasn't "material" to the product, it was unconstitutional, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision.

Labels can be required only if they alert consumers to a change that affects a food's composition or nutrition, its physical properties (such as shelf life), or the qualities that influence the sensory experience of smelling, tasting and eating it, the FDA says.

It is not a definition that sits well with all.

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Center for Food Safety, said that approach reflects "19th century science." His group has petitioned the FDA to update its rules so that any product created via genetic engineering would be considered altered enough to require a label.

Such a change would also give companies more leeway to label their products as free of genetically modified ingredients: Today they can do so only if the label doesn't imply that there's something wrong with GM foods or that GMO-free foods are superior (although many companies skirt the rules).

"We need to know we have an agency using 21st century regulations to deal with 21st century technology," Kimbrell said.

The FDA's stance on labeling genetically modified foods differs starkly from that of European regulators, who require foods with genetically engineered ingredients to bear labels. Most scientists believe that the FDA's approach is rational — but perhaps it's too rational if the goal is to encourage public acceptance of the technology, said Jennifer Kuzma, a science policy expert at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

"This is something that people want to see on labels," Kuzma said. "My view is that consumers deserve a choice when it comes to something that is important to them, even though there may not be a scientific basis for doing it."

Rodemeyer, the expert on biotechnology policy, says he thinks food producers made a tactical mistake by deciding not to label their genetically modified products voluntarily.

"When you don't label, you're always raising suspicion you're trying to hide something," he said.

Since most processed foods contain oil, sugar, syrups, emulsifiers, flour, cornmeal and protein that are derived from GM crops, virtually every product sold in the last 15 years would have carried a label. By now, those labels would have lost all meaning, Rodemeyer said: "If they would have all held their noses and jumped together, this wouldn't be an issue."

science@latimes.com

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Remembering a 'cop's cop' in San Bernardino

The day before his death, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy Jeremiah MacKay agreed to a request from his wife, Lynette: He stayed home from work.

He spent the day enjoying the company of his stepdaughter, 6-year-old Kaitlyn, and his 4-month-old son, Cayden.

For days before that respite, MacKay had been patrolling in the mountains where he had grown up, searching for Christopher Dorner, a former police officer suspected of a violent rampage that left three others dead.

MacKay had volunteered for the task, said San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon during MacKay's funeral Thursday at San Manuel Amphitheater in San Bernardino. MacKay, he said, was determined to find Dorner and approached the manhunt with "courage, tenacity and resolve."

On Feb. 12, MacKay, 35, wound up outside an isolated mountain cabin where Dorner had barricaded himself. The 14-year veteran of the department was shot and killed in a raging gunfight.

The air was cold and the nearby mountains shrouded in fog before MacKay's funeral began. The sound of bagpipes cut the air, in honor of the fellow piper and member of his department's honor guard.

Mike Riley and a group of drummers and bagpipers drove 18 hours from Boise, Idaho, to play for the service.

"Since Deputy MacKay was a piper, there was a call for all pipes and drums to respond," said Riley, a police officer and drummer wearing a blue plaid kilt. "We're here to temper the grief with honor."

Inside the amphitheater, hundreds of uniformed law enforcement officers saluted as MacKay's flag-draped casket was wheeled to the front. San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies covered their badges with black bands bearing MacKay's name.

MacKay was remembered as a "cop's cop" with an infectious sense of humor. Colleagues said he won the office ugly Christmas sweater contest and carried a pink Hello Kitty lunch bag. He was said to have the distinctive "laugh of someone who truly enjoyed life."

Three times, speakers referred to the Bible verse John 15:13: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." McMahon said MacKay "truly died so that others did not have to."

McMahon said MacKay was at a "tremendous disadvantage" during the gunfight but that he "remained because it was his duty … to place his life at risk to stop an evil man."

Colleagues and friends who were among thousands in the amphitheater said MacKay spoke of wanting to catch Dorner, who died from what authorities believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound as the cabin went up in flames.

Dorner also is believed to have killed three other people, including Riverside Police Officer Michael Crain, who was buried last week. On Feb. 3, Monica Quan, the daughter of a retired LAPD captain, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, were found shot to death in what police believe were the first of Dorner's crimes.

MacKay graduated from sheriff's trainee to deputy sheriff on his 21st birthday. He later was promoted to detective and worked most recently in the department's Yucaipa station.

He was known to give bear hugs and to get on his knees to talk to children so he could speak to them eye-to-eye. He was said to have recently taught his stepdaughter how to ride a bike and how to tie her shoes.

His father, Alan, said it was clear since childhood that MacKay was an "adrenaline junkie."

MacKay was 4 years old when his father and a buddy decided to take a backpacking trip to the peak of San Gorgonio Mountain, the highest peak in Southern California. MacKay persuaded them to let him join, though they were sure he would not be able to handle the climb.

He reached the top, Alan said. The only time he was carried was when they went through snow — MacKay was wearing only tennis shoes.

Alan MacKay described his son as a protector who "wanted to intervene when somebody was hurting somebody else."

"I think the reason Jeremiah was taken home … was that heaven needed a training officer," he said.

Photographs displayed in a video tribute showed MacKay smiling with his son asleep on his chest; sharing pints of beer with friends; laughing with his wife; and playing his bagpipes, with a red face and full cheeks.

As the final prayer was spoken, MacKay's infant son cried.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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Eric Garcetti's role in L.A. budget fixes is in dispute

Pressed in the race for mayor of Los Angeles to say how he would fix a persistent budget gap that has led to the gutting of many city services, Eric Garcetti urges voters to look at what he has done in the past.

The onetime City Council president claims credit for reforms that he said cut the City Hall shortfall to just over $200 million from more than $1 billion. He sees "tremendous progress," principally in reducing pension and healthcare costs, and asserts: "I delivered that."

But the truth is in dispute. Although there is not a singular view about any aspect of the city's troubled finances, most of those in the thick of recent budget fights depict Garcetti not as a fiscal hard-liner but as a conciliator who used his leadership position to chart a middle ground on the most significant changes.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, city administrative officer Miguel Santana and one of Garcetti's rivals in the mayoral race, Councilwoman Jan Perry, were among those who pushed for bigger workforce reductions and larger employee contributions toward pensions and healthcare. Labor leaders and their champions on the City Council, including Paul Koretz and Richard Alarcon, sought to cushion the blow for workers.

Garcetti and his supporters say he moderated between those extremes. His critics said he worried too much about process and airing every viewpoint rather than focusing relentlessly on shoring up the city's bottom line.

"It was through the mayor's persistence and steadfast position that we got ongoing concessions," said Santana, the chief budget official for Los Angeles. "It was in collaboration with the council leadership that we finally reached agreements with labor."

The $1-billion-plus deficit Garcetti speaks of shrinking refers not to a single year but to the total of budget gaps that confronted Los Angeles over four years if no corrective action had been taken. The city's fiscal crisis worsened during that time because Garcetti and his fellow council members — including Perry and mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel — approved a city employee pay raise of 25% over five years just before the country stumbled into the recession. (Greuel left the council in 2009 when she was elected city controller.)

Although Garcetti focuses on his role, a portion of the financial improvements were outside his control. The state's elimination of redevelopment agencies in 2012 returned millions to L.A.'s general fund. Tax revenue also ticked upward with the economic recovery.

Garcetti's position as council president from 2006 through 2011 did put him at the center of debate about annual shortfalls that ranged to more than $400 million.

In 2009, he supported an early retirement plan that knocked 2,400 workers off the payroll. "I really pushed that through," the councilman said in an interview. Two participants in confidential contract talks at the heart of the deal had diametrically opposed views. "He made it happen, period," one said; the other offered: "I wouldn't say he was a major mover."

The plan saves the city a maximum of $230 million a year in salary and pension reductions in the short run. But Los Angeles borrowed to spread the costs of the program over 15 years, with current employees and retirees expected to shoulder the cost of the early exits.

The early retirements are expected to do nothing to resolve the long-term "structural deficit" — the $200 million to $400 million a year that Los Angeles spends above what it takes in. And early retirements could even be a net negative in the long run if, as city revenue recovers, new employees are put in those 2,400 empty positions too quickly.

In 2010 the city completed a budget fix that did attack the structural imbalance.

Garcetti's initial proposal called for upping the retirement age for new city employees to 60 from 55 and requiring workers to contribute a minimum of 2% of salary toward their retiree health care.

Budget chief Santana offered a markedly tougher plan. It required a 4% retiree health contribution, halved the health subsidy for retirees and capped pension benefits at 75% of salary instead of 100%. Santana's plan, also for new employees, became the basis of the reform.

Some who served with Garcetti on the council committee that leads employee negotiations pushed for even greater sacrifices. But Garcetti fought against ratcheting up demands on workers, saying it would be useless to approve a plan that would not survive subsequent union votes.

The councilman's greatest contribution may have come after city leaders set their position on pensions. Garcetti took the unusual step of visiting groups of workers. Some employees booed. Some asked him why city lawmakers, among the highest paid in the nation at $178,000 a year, didn't cut their own salaries.

"There was a lot of anger," said a labor leader who spoke on condition of anonymity because that union has not endorsed in the race. "But Eric talked to people as if they were adults and stayed until he answered all their questions. People appreciated him ... taking that kind of heat."

Matt Szabo, a former deputy mayor who helped negotiate with labor, said Garcetti deserved "every bit of credit" he has claimed for deficit reduction. "He knew he was running for mayor, and he was doing the right thing, but it was something that was going to cost him later" in terms of union support, said Szabo, who is running to replace Garcetti on the council.

Most of the employee groups that have endorsed thus far in the mayor's race have come out for Greuel. One political advantage for the controller: She left the council in 2009, before the city began making its toughest demands on workers.

Garcetti found himself stuck the middle again with another 2010 vote, this one over the elimination of 232 jobs — most of them in libraries and day care operations at city parks. Garcetti voted for the layoffs. Later he voted to reconsider, though he said recently that he intended only to re-air the issue, not to keep the workers on the job.

Labor leaders faulted Garcetti for giving the appearance he might be ready to save the jobs when he really wasn't. The reductions remain a sore point, because a "poison pill" in the contract required that any layoffs be accompanied by immediate pay raises for remaining city employees. Fierce disagreement remains over whether the layoffs saved the city any money.

"That became part of the negative picture" of Garcetti, said one labor leader, who asked not to be named out of concern about alienating a possible future mayor. The candidate said in an interview that he frequently found himself hewing a middle ground between some colleagues "who simply hope more revenue would come in" and others who wanted to use an "ax," making indiscriminate cuts. He added: "To me, both views were equally unacceptable."

Critics find Garcetti too malleable, ready to shift to the last argument he has heard. But others appreciate his quest for the middle, saying the fact he sometimes irritated both budget hard-liners and unions showed he had taken a reasoned approach.

"The criticism of Eric is also sort of the good news," said one of the union reps. "He has this very process-y, kumbaya, can't-we-all-get-along style. It drove us all crazy. But now I really miss it because it seems to be all politics over policy."

james.rainey@latimes.com

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