Ex-Mayor Jim Hahn recognized with name on City Hall East

Los Angeles officials honored former Mayor Jim Hahn Thursday by naming the City Hall East after him.

Hahn's political career ended a decade ago when he hired police Chief Bill Bratton and fought secession efforts by Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. But Hahn is the only person to have served as Los Angeles' controller, city attorney and mayor. The Controller's Office and City Attorney's Office are both located in City Hall East, which is why it was selected for Hahn's honor. 

James K. Hahn City Hall East is now the eastern bookend to the Civic Center. The western bookend is the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, named for the longtime county supervisor and father of the former mayor.

When he was elected mayor in 2001, Hahn found a police department that had lost confidence in its leadership. He did not support then-Chief Bernard Parks for a second term and instead brought in Bratton from the NYPD. 

Hahn's other major challenge as mayor came as Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley tried to break away from the city of Los Angeles. The decision to fight secession, coupled with the firing of Parks, cost Hahn support in the valley and the African-American community. He lost reelection to Antonio Villaraigosa in 2005. 

"The decisions were not really tough decisions. Decisions were easy to make," Hahn said. "All I had to decide was ‘what’s the best thing to do for the city? What’s the right thing to do?’ So everybody says they were tough decisions but they weren’t. They were easy decisions because I knew what I wanted to do was to be able to say, when I looked in the mirror, that I did what was right rather than what was in my best interests."

Developer Rick Caruso, president of the Police Commission under the Hahn administration, praised the former mayor at Thursday's naming ceremony. 

"In only four short years, you set the stage for a change that will live on for generations in this city. What I admire the most is that during the entire term in public office, you never asked what's best for your career. But you always asked, what's best for the city of Los Angeles," Caruso said. 

The former mayor's sister, Janice Hahn, served on the Los Angeles City Council for a decade before she was elected to Congress in 2011. She told the audience outside City Hall East that getting the building named in her brother's honor was her final act as a councilwoman. 

"It was the last thing I did in July of 2011, before I went to Congress. Didn't realize that I was entering the most unproductive Congress in the history of the world, known as the 'Do-Nothing Congress,' so really it was the last thing I've ever done," Janice Hahn joked. 

The Hahn family represents almost seven decades of public service in Los Angeles. Kenneth Hahn served five years on the City Council, then spent 40 years on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors beginning in 1952. His brother, Gordon Hahn, was a L.A. city councilman from 1953 to 1963. 

Jim Hahn is now a judge in Santa Monica.