By Betty Pleasant (Posted first at wavenewspapers.com)
There’s a lot of lying and speculating going on in the city about Councilman Bernard Parks’ resignation from the MTA Board of Directors. When I heard rumors that Parks was planning to give up his MTA seat, I called the mayor’s office for verification and comment and Matt Szabo, the mayor’s media guy, said he had not heard of such an action on Parks’ part but allowed as how if he was resigning, it would not be prompted by anything the mayor had done. Matt said he’d check it out, however, and get back to me.
In the meantime, I called Parks’ office and asked his press deputy whether Parks is thinking about resigning from the board, to which the deputy responded: “We’re not commenting about that.” (Read: “Yes, he is.”) Then I sat and thought to myself: Since Parks is resigning, who would the mayor appoint to fill his seat? By law, that particular MTA board seat has to be occupied by a Los Angeles City Council member and I figured it ought to be a council member close to the South Los Angeles area Parks is choosing to desert. So, who would it be? Why, Herb Wesson, of course!
I then called Herb and asked if he would be amenable to filling Parks’ vacant seat. Wesson sent word to me that he didn’t know anything about Parks’ plans to resign; that this was the first he’d heard about it. Hmm.
I then discussed the matter with several other people in positions to know the truth and who do not lie and learned that: No. 1, Parks had resigned about two weeks ago; No. 2, Parks had discussed his resignation fully with the mayor; No. 3, Four council members were being considered to replace him: Bill Rosendahl, Ed Reyes, Jose Huizar and Wesson, and No. 4, those four are being considered because they specifically asked for the job.
Now that the truth is known, there remain only two questions: Why was Parks’ resignation a secret? And why did he resign from a seat I heard he had lobbied so hard to get?
Matt called me the next day and confirmed that Parks had written the mayor a letter of resignation dated Jan. 8. Parks’ short letter gives no reason for leaving, but merely thanks the mayor for giving him the opportunity to serve.
Parks’ resignation was probably kept hush-hush until I entered the picture because the mayor’s staff hadn’t decided how they wanted to spin it. I suspect it’s as Matt intimated: They wanted to make sure that once the resignation became known, people didn’t conclude it was caused by the mayor, the man who appointed him to the board.
Why did Parks resign? That’s the bigger question. At first people were saying he resigned because he didn’t want to have to interface with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas who, by virtue of his new office, is now an MTA board member. But I dismissed that talk as just foolish, for surely Parks would not give up one of only two Black-held seats on the 13-member board for such a petty reason.
But you know, despite intermittently proffered speculation that Parks wanted to leave so he could concentrate on the city budget or that being on the board was too much work, his anathema to Ridley-Thomas has become the prevailing assumption among the people who ponder such things.
“Everybody knows he doesn’t like to lose,” one insider said about Parks. They’re saying that even though it would be in the best interests of his South L.A. constituency — particularly the Crenshaw District which is approaching transportation critical mass — Parks cannot bring himself to agree, disagree and interact with Ridley-Thomas.
Even a Westside official asked: “Wouldn’t it be better to have two African-Americans working to address the needs of South L.A.?”
Uh, yes. If this is truly the reason for Parks’ resignation, then I guess we can expect a blizzard of “I quit” letters from Parks because he and Ridley-Thomas are listed as serving on several boards together, including the Coliseum Commission and that Expo Line thing.
They represent the same people and they ought to become as thick as thieves. Or not. (Betty Pleasant writes Soulvine for the Wave Newspapers. More Wave columns and news at www.wavenewspapers.com ) ◘
CityWatch
Vol 7 Issue 9
Pub: Jan 30, 2009