At the meeting Friday with Neighborhood Council leaders, Deputy Mayor Larry Frank announced that the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment will be abolished and nearly all its staff eliminated.
DONE Commissioner and NC leader Al Abrams sent out an email Saturday explaining what the mayor’s plan is. Go to OurLA.org and read what happened.
The damage is DONE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCVnX3w-hNQ
WIt is amazing the actions that are taking place. The Mayor is eliminating the Environmental Affairs Department. He is transferring most of the staff to City Planning and the Local Enforcement Agency (LEA) (monitors trash sites) to the Department of Building and Safety. The LEA staff work is very important….. it keeps track of the environmental/toxic situations at all landfills and trash transfer sites in the City. The problem is the LEA will be assigned to the General Funded Code Enforcement Bureau (CEB) which has had massive staff cuts……. Hopefully they do not have further cuts or the LEA and CEB staff will not be able to keep up with the quality of life inspections/actions that they do faithfully every day!
Ron:
Your comment on the death of DONE is very,very premature. The people are going to fight back vigorously on this. I am not a fan of DONE’s performance. . . However, the transfer of the powers or duties of a Department created under the Charter to another Department, office, or Board must follow the protocol set out in Section 514 of the Charter. There are very strict requirements to be followed. It does not appear the Mayor has come close to following them in (post-haste) moving DONE’s functions into CDD (a Department created under Ordinance).
Nothing can be done officially or lawfully without first having the City Council consider the Mayor’s proposal (and it has to be a detailed proposal, accompanied by proposed Ordinances and budgetary transfer instructions); whreupon the Council must either reject, accept, or modify the Mayor’s sugested change within 45 days.
If the Council does not act, then, and only then does the Mayor’s proposal go into effect.
Aside from the issue of DONE’s demise or delineation, there remains the broader question of whether the Mayor is going to treat the Charter like a Chinese Menu, picking and choosing which provisions by which he will abide.
The Council’s action last Thursday (which emerged out of closed session) authorizing and directing the elimination of up to 4000 jobs or positions was also of questionable legal validity becase (a)Under Council Rule 43, all new motions have to first go to a committee (where the public can comment),(b)the substance of the motion was never really properly agendized (the agenda item did not come close to describing the motion),and (c) the public never got a chance to comment on the motion. At a minimum, the motion should have been assigned to Budget & Finance, where it could have been promptly waived out of committee, and then put on the Council agenda for discussion by the public. Then the public is made aware of the content of the motion and is afforded a fair opportunity to comment.
If the Mayor continues to ignore his responsibilities under the Charter, and unlawfully attempts to consolidate power into his office, the chances of the City’s bankruptcy are enhanced, not diminished.
We cannot afford to have a constitutional crisis on top of a budget and economic crisis. This will add further uncertainty and angst to the current situation. Our Charter is not intended to resemble or create a ‘boss-style’ Chicago political system and we are not some third-world country where ‘crisis capitalism’ or ‘shock politics’ is used to leverage the consolidation and aggregation of power into the office of the executive. We need to follow the law; and we need the City Council to stand up for its prerogatives, be pro-active, take the tough votes (after debating the issues), and not appease bully or oppressive (dictatorial) tactics.
We also need the City Attorney to enforce the law and demand that the Mayor promptly rescind his actions regarding DONE and possibly Environmental Affairs as well.
Precedent exists for the City Attorney to sue an elected official. Rocky did it against Laura Chick and the Controller’s office, and Nuch continued the suit (which I guess upset Laura Chick). Nothing precludes the City Attorney from suing the Mayor to restrain acts which are ultra vires (in excess of the Mayor’s (very limited) popwers under the Charter).
It is also time for the Commissions to start doing their jobs because they are another key check and balance under the Charter.
That is why I am calling on BONC (the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners – which has have jurisdiction over DONE) to immediately call a special meeting to (a) discuss the lawfulness of the Mayor’s actions, (b) to consider alternative proposals to create efficiencies (one proposal promoted by Jack Humphrevile drafted by Shawn Simons – an N/C President) will save up to $4.5 Million, generate efficiences, position the N/C’s to begin to go after grants and thereby generate revenue, and allow the N/C’s to keep their $45K allocation and roll-over money), and (c) to appoint a Board of Examiners under Section 217 of the Charter to hold Citywide hearings during the next 20-30 days and solicit meaningful public input on the Mayor’s plan with regard to DONE and any alternative plans which the public can devise and present. That way, the City Council will have meaningful, thoughtful input before deciding whether to ratify, rescind, or modify the Mayor’s proposal (and that’s all it is (legally) at the moment).
My bet Ron is with the power of ideas and with the power of the people. It is up to Nuch to now do what he said he would do and (a) enforce the law, and (b) represent the interests of the broader body politic over the narrow political interests of the Mayor.
If the Mayor had attended to business last year and provided some real leadership, we might have been better prepared for the current difficulty.
As it is, however, I have every confidence that we will emerge stronger and better from this. . . in large part because we will have followed the rule of law.
If the people want to amend the Charter to give more power to the Mayor, then they are free to do so. . .but until that happens, we need to abide by the provisions in the Charter and cease appeasing these bully (scare) tactics being employed by the Mayor. All attempts to leverage our current budgetary difficulties into the unlawful aggregation of authority and concentrated power in the Mayor’s office (which, by the way, will be beyond the Controller’s performance audit powers)need to be soundly confronted and rejected.
Noel,
So at what point do the Mayor’s inappropriate and/or illegal actions make it a legitimate reason to start a recall?
Or could he be impeached?
WHERE ARE THOSE RECALL PAPERS??? EVERYONE IS ASKING WHERE DO THEY SIGN??
On the one hand, the Mayor and/or City Council’s ability to regulate and control the Neighborhood Councils takes away their independence. On the other hand, the City Council asserts its independence when former Controller Chick attempted to audit the City Attorney’s Workman’s comp records because of a concern of a precedent for the Controller to audit other elected officials, namely the City Council.
Addressing one manner in which Randi Levin’s ITA could help reduce the City’s budget mess. . . .
During 2002-03, ITA argued to the City Council that ITA needed an additional Temporary Telecommunications Regulatory Officer position to help ITA complete cable television franchise renewal negotiations.
ITA then proceeded to hire two TROs who had no cable television regulatory work experience. The Temporary hire, William Imperial, was noteworthy for having resigned from the California Bar after having been repeatedly disciplined by the California Bar.
Not surprisingly, ITA failed to complete cable television franchise renewal negotiations, thus wasting thousands of hours of City employee time and hundreds of thousands of City dollars, if not more.
One of the above two TRO hires (Richard Benbow) resigned from City employment and now works for Time Warner Cable.
Mr. Imperial, the “temporary” hire is still at the City, collecting over $120,000 a year in salary plus City benefits.
Does ITA have a justifiable reason for continuing to employ Mr. Imperial?
Not once, during his tenure at the City, has the City ever imposed monetary penalties against a cable television company for a violation of the City’s video/cable customer service standards.
Cable television franchise fee reviews are farmed out to private CPAs. The City doesn’t need to pay someone $120,000 to renew these contracts with outside CPAs.
Mr. Imperial has done virtually nothing to put meaningful Public, Education, and Governmental Access programming on Time Warner’s Cable System. There is a bulletin board on one channel in the 90s and another potential channel lies fallow. Imperial is not significantly responsible for the programming on Channels 35 and 36.
Why does the City continue wasting money on William Imperial?
Noel, the public generally supports the mayor’s motives here – and he makes a cogent case in today’s LA Times editorial – and think the Council has been too wimpy and needed a kick in the butt, while even conservative commenters like John Philips and Doug McIntyre believe that the City Attorney shouldn’t be balking at cutting his own staff under threats of lawsuits. And shouldn’t be running around threatening to sue and jail any official elected or not, even just for disagreeing with him.
And as for your brushing off Chick “not liking” him continuing Rocky’s lawsuit against her, well, there’s a really funny thing called integrity and lack of it, as in promising to uphold her view to get her support then throwing her under the bus as he intended to all along, what she calls being “a liar and demagogue.” And then dragging the case on and on refusing to settle for peanuts despite both major papers wimpy as they’ve been, editorializing against him, and even depriving Greuel of independent legal counsel until the presiding Judge, Moody, said that was self-serving and absurd. He chewed out the Council for caving in to such an absurd demand and as Woocher said, and Perry has found out, any of them can be next just for having a different opinion of their jobs.
And Noel, your lack of concern about lack of ethics in a city attorney isn’t shared by most people and business types who sided with Chick when she spoke to us downtown a while back – it was the Nooch’s inability to understand “the fuss” that makes decent people shake their heads or call him a flat-out bully.
And there’s the rub: when he’s more interested in keeping his head up Cooley’s backside because he’s his “creation” as well as beholden to other rightwing Republicans who ran him with the Party’s money while pretending he was “independent,” he is operating to suit his and Cooley’s political and personal ambitions and just can’t be trusted. He wants to plump up his own large staff and add hundreds of investigators as private cops because of his own political motives. Their war on dispensaries is not what the public wants to focus time and money on, so he’s rightly been virtually ignored by the City Council except on drafting language AFTER they hammered out their own “compromise” such as it is.
Oh and Noel – the L A Times ran an editorial that HE doesn’t understand his duties under the City Charter and has been abusing them. Something most constitutional scholars seem to agree with – and most people see that he’s just plain a smalltown rightwing yahoo over his head.
So if the Mayor is abusing his powers as you see them, at least he’s doing so to keep the city from going bankrupt – maybe belatedly so as you claim. But where was “budget Hawk” Big Pension Bernie Parks, who’s now pointing fingers, as head of the Budget Committee all this time? And the Council you want to stand up to him, wouldn’t cut any jobs all this time – Alarcon and some others attacking Santana as “heartless” because they have no fiscal sense at all.
Maybe cutting DONE is something you see as a backdoor way to kill opposition, and with your efforts on Measure B I see your point there. But pull back from the brink, Noel – if the mayor’s FINALLY showing leadership, urging everyone to undercut him does not seem smart.
@11:32 Missed the point of nweiss’ comments about the Charter requirements and the apparent Mayoral launch to eliminate DONE as an independent department.
But thanks for the tip on Sunday’s op ed by AV. His premise is wrong. In years past the City took in enuf revenue to support expense — but it failed to save for this big bad rainy day. And since the days of Ron Deaton as CLA, the warning call about the structural deficit has been clarion. The warning was out there when AV first relocated from state to local gov’t as CD14 rep. There is still no plan. The job position numbers get tossed out (1,000? 4,000? how about 3,567?), but there is no plan.
Proving once again that stirring the pot is always easier. It fools people into thinking you are doing real work.
The Mayor will need to re- write his Executive Order that afforded Environmental Affairs such a central place to the City’s sustainability efforts. But I drift off topic.
Thank you Noel Weiss and 12:15.
Perhaps the Charter needs some amendments. For instance, if GM’s and commissioners can be hired and fired by the mayor so easily, should commissions be eliminated? How much do they cost?
What was supposed to be the voice of the citizens has become an extension of the mayor. They do his bidding.
Either that, or amend the Charter to remove so much power from one person.
I realize that spreading the power out to a bunch of other elected officials can make things much dirtier and chaotic, but that can’t be fixed in the Charter. I think only campaign finance reform can address that.
How about eliminating all the City-assigned home-garaged vehicles given to the Mayor and Council, General Managers and thHeir staffmembers? All those folks should be driving their own vehicles and paying for their own vehicle maintenance and gas like the rest of us city employees….that alone should place a big dent in the budget