CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD--Here is a curious story that follows on the Seabreeze scandal. You may recall that the Seabreeze developers put a little more than half a million dollars into the accounts of local politicians. They got their way on the development, in spite of local protests. The LA Times story mentioned that Council District 15's councilman Joe Buscaino (photo above) was the recipient of $90,000 of that money. Buscaino is quoted in a news story (and telling a radio interviewer) that the way the money was allegedly collected, if true, is illegal. That's the word he used.
So the next time we had a local neighborhood council meeting, I asked the councilman's representative about that money. I asked, "Has he made any decision about giving it back?"
It seems like an obvious question. It also seems like a question that the councilman would love to answer if he is really on the up and up. So what answer did I get?
Like I said, the story is curious because the answer was curious. I was told that I would have to ask the campaign, because this is a campaign matter.
I can sympathize with the councilman's representative, because he was in the position that Tom Wolfe referred to as a "flak catcher." The rep is there to take flak for an elected official who isn't going to come to the meeting. There's no easy way out for a question like this. If he says that the money will be donated to charity, that is something of an admission that the councilman accepted a bad campaign contribution. If he doesn't say so, then the public is left to think that the councilman is holding onto $90,000 worth of tainted money. Still, there is every reason for the politician to answer the question immediately because otherwise, it will keep coming up and thereby do much more political damage than if it were answered promptly.
But instead we got this gobbledygook of a non-answer.
Sorry, but the question goes well beyond campaign finance by itself. It is relevant because it bears on the performance of the office and on the public's evaluation of the job being carried out by the councilman. Crooked or straight? Straightforward or evasive?
It's a stretch to try to convince people that the staffers are avoiding answering the question out of ethical considerations. Yes, it's important to keep the staffers from taking on electoral jobs while they are being paid by the city for city work. But this question wasn't inviting the staffer to hand out campaign literature or sing the official campaign song. It was an invitation to inform the public that the office is not compromised by dirty money. The evasion by councilman Buscaino's representative seemed fishy.
Having $90,000 of illegal money in your bank account ought to be embarrassing. It's hard to imagine the councilman not having a prepared answer. Its equally hard to imagine the councilman's staff not being coached in how to give that answer.
But no. As of now, the people of San Pedro represented by the neighborhood council haven't had their question answered. The question goes right to the issue of ethics in campaigning.
Thanks to Tony and Dan for taking up the stakeholder definition argument
I have been singularly honored this year by having my City Watch column on neighborhood council stakeholder status be answered by two (count 'em) columns which call me by name and disagree with my views. Tony Butka and Dr Dan Wiseman have added to a debate which began before there were neighborhood councils, continued with the Neighborhood Council Review Commission, and survives to the present day. I'd like to offer a couple of recent thoughts on the matter. But first, I'd like to mention a definitive piece on the origins, political and philosophical, of the system.
I would love to be able to say that I wrote that piece, but the honor goes to Robert Greene's article "Not in my neighborhood council," published in the August 26, 2004 edition of LA Weekly. It's been 12 years since that article came out, and a lot has changed, but the overview of how the councils were formed out of a mass of confusion and self-contradictory rules was true back then and continues to define us even now. Here's just one example. The legal requirement was that each neighborhood council be diverse, but the law didn't explain how to reconcile that rule with the reality of voters who select non-diverse governing boards. In practice, the city government has figured out that allowing the voters to select their own representatives, no matter how non-diverse they may be, is the way to go.
An issue that Greene pointed out was the tension between competing ideals: the neighborhood council as the people's lobbyist vs. the neighborhood council as just another of the city's governmental go-alongs. (As an example of this tension, imagine how a council operating as the people's lobbyist would have handled the Seabreeze scandal. The question should at least have appeared on the agenda!)
I suspect that it is these built in contradictions that continue to drive the discussion of what a neighborhood council should be, and in particular, how we should define who gets to vote in a neighborhood council's election. I've presented an argument that limiting voting rights to residents of the neighborhood council district makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons. Still, I would be the first to admit that my proposal limits the scope of participation at the electoral level.
My argument was that limiting electoral participation strengthened the effectiveness of each council by defining it as the true spokesman for a particular group of residents. Specifically, your City Council representative understands that you represent his constituency when he hears from you. To the extent that he sees you as a statistical sample of his entire voting constituency, he will take your views seriously.
The alternative -- wider participation by geographic outsiders -- certainly broadens the scope of who can play in any one council. Whether it ultimately improves city government or lessens the effectiveness of the councils by making them look less representative to the members of the City Council is one key question. The other key question is whether the current definition is so broad that it seriously harms our ability to do business. I think Dr Wiseman has sketched out his vision of a broader system for stakeholder status quite nicely. I suspect that ultimately, our disagreement on this point is a value judgment. I can't prove that he is wrong because his argument is logical. My argument is equally logical, but based on a different vision of what the councils are for.
One thought that keeps occurring to me is that our neighborhood councils are way too large, particularly when you think about a neighborhood unit that is designed to prepare for a large disaster. A population much larger than about 4000 is getting to be too big. A group of 4-5000 people is optimum for citizen participation; at least some studies have suggested this. Instead, we have neighborhood councils that range from about 20,000 up to four and five times this number. Lots of smaller councils with proportionately smaller budgets would be better for disaster preparedness and, I suspect, for citizen participation. How such a system would work with regard to City Council relationships is a harder question, to be left for another day.
The idea here is not to pound on theoretical niceties, but to consider the practicalities. If our city had a thousand small groups instead of about a hundred large groups, the smaller groups would be getting lots more done in the aggregate. Yes, we would have to develop better regional and citywide alliances, but at least we would have a chance to do great things. It doesn't take a lot of thought to realize that smaller councils would be more likely to represent the immediate concerns of residents rather than trying to be all things to all people.
One other thought. I notice that a lot of neighborhood councils, including those in my own region, take a lot of time and resources to communicate to their stakeholders. Unfortunately, they seem to be spending the most effort just in communicating their own existence. It's not a bad idea to use your communications resources to build up the number of participants, but this is just the first part of what should be the goal. The next part is to become the go-to organization for your constituents to voice their concerns. But you're still not done. The real goal is to turn the information you've received from your constituents into political power being used on behalf of their views.
Communications is not the game. It's just one tool. Political power used on behalf of your constituents is the goal.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
Councilman’s Rep Dodges Question on Tainted Campaign Funds from Sea Breeze
