CommentsEASTSIDER-In their 2019 Election Manual, the City set two-year terms for Board members, odd year elections, and incorporated a number of rules. They also unilaterally canceled the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council elections at the last minute. Which leads to this article.
A zombie is a “voodoo belief and popular folklore, a corpse that has been reanimated, especially by means of a supernatural power or spell.”
I think the definition pretty much describes the joint actions of BONC, DONE, and the LA City Clerk. They unilaterally canceled the NC Election in Glassell Park because there were not enough candidates to make a quorum, and then they attempted to resuscitate the corpse by having the seven members left on the old Board meet to first appoint a candidate of their choice to make a quorum, and then have the Board move on, to fill the Board Vacancies through appointment
Incredible! Assuming there are two-year terms for elected Boards, effective July 1 there is no GPNC Board. So, the City powers-that-be decided to reanimate the corpse by means of their own supernatural power of appointment. Hot damn.
The Background
It’s been a long time since the heady days of 2002, and monumental changes have taken place regarding NC elections. Currently, for example, there is no statutory framework for Neighborhood Council Elections (see Article IX of the City Charter and the 2013 Revised Plan). I can’t find a single reference to frequency or details of NC elections.
Now that the City Clerk is involved, we find, way over in the City Administrative Code, (Section 20.36 of the City Clerks Code), the following language:
(a) The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (Department) and the City Clerk are authorized to conduct Neighborhood Council board member elections during odd numbered years beginning in 2019 pursuant to a schedule to be developed in consultation with the Neighborhood Councils and pursuant to this section.”
That’s all, folks. What’s in front of us now is a masterpiece of obfuscation which has determined that the term of office for Neighborhood Councils is two years, with elections taking place in odd numbered years. All the rest of this crud is made up stuff by the two-headed monster called DONE and BONC, then foisted upon us as truth in a 22-page novel called 2019 Neighborhood Council Election Handbook. (Version Date: December 7, 2018.)
The Details
After all of the incredible waste of time as the City makes candidates for Neighborhood Council seats run through incredible hoops, while off-loading the election costs to these same Neighborhood Councils instead of paying for the election costs themselves, the City masterminds at page nine of the election manual to give the show away. It has the grand title of Board Affirmation and Loss of Quorum. To quote the Section:
“In the event there are no candidates for a single NC board seat, that contest will be omitted from the Official Ballot.
In the event there are not enough candidates in a NC election for all of the board seats for a competitive contest (one or fewer candidates) after the List of Certified Candidates has been released, the election for the given NC will be suspended and canceled. Any candidates that have been certified will be seated by DONE through the Department’s prescribed Board Affirmation process.
If there are not enough candidates to meet a quorum of the board, DONE will use the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners’ Loss of Quorum policy to seat a new board. For more information regarding this process, visit the DONE website at empowerla.org.”
The Glassell Park “Experience”
Over time, the GPNC has become increasingly dysfunctional, with a hopelessly out of date website, virtually no outreach to stakeholders, limited communications to keep all board members up to date, and a drop-off of Board attendance.
They also budgeted less than $1000 for the 2019 elections, according to a couple of ex-Board members I talked to. Further, most election discussions were between the President and DONE, with disastrous results. To be fair, I don’t think Karin Davalos had a lot of background knowledge about all this when she became President.
Even prior to the election date of April 13, the Board was having problems obtaining a meeting quorum, and ultimately was not able to have a quorum period. At the same time, the field of candidates wound up being only seven before the election date. Thus, no hope of obtaining a quorum through the electoral process.
Under the poorly thought out and highly questionable Election criteria, “the election for the given NC will be suspended and canceled.” You betcha’. Great idea.
Boy DONE sure showed them! No election, and no ability to even have a Board meeting. But their trusty bogus rules had a wonderful solution: “DONE will use the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners’ Loss of Quorum policy to seat a new board.”
But wait, they didn’t do that. Not Grayce Liu. Instead they unilaterally scheduled a meeting of the no-quorum GPNC Board, and then, using the same Loss of Quorum policy of BONC, had the remnants of the Board conduct a fashion show of the seven or so well-meaning people who would be willing to be on the Board.
Even better, they then decided which seats to fill to have eight that are needed for a quorum. They filled at-large seats only and stopped when they got to eight. Then they took a pause and started the Board meeting to complete the rest of the agenda. Nowhere here was there any “election.”
I kid you not. The only person I felt sorry for was the poor DONE staffer sent out to preside over this travesty of due process, as he bravely tried to make the absurd rational. Even more fascinating, most of the original Board members who were incapable of obtaining a quorum in the first place, all got their seats back, then turned around and voted to keep Karin Davalos as President. If at first you don’t succeed, ready, fire, aim.
Quo Vadis?
Somewhere in the middle of this I sent a Public Records Act request to DONE and received a two-part data dump of approximately 700 pages of documents, most of them useless.
What did emerge was a mockery of the Charter and the Plan. Item: The City Clerk and DONE repeatedly made unilateral changes to the boundaries of the GPNC by simply amending the existing GPNC Bylaws. Furthermore, DONE had a field day unilaterally changing the GPNC Bylaws time and again, with no public notice.
So much for the provision in the Charter and the Plan that the individual Neighborhood Councils would make their own damn Bylaws, subject only to legal review by what DONE calls the “City Attorney.” Hah! Instead, DONE imposed a “lock up” period where Neighborhood Councils could not request any changes to their own Bylaws, even as DONE itself had a field day making changes with the City Clerk.
If BONC and DONE are going to impose a single set of Bylaws, then they should change the darned rules and regulations, promulgate whatever BS they want to, and impose the result equally to every single remaining Neighborhood Council.
Then we won’t need any Bylaws Committees (Plan be damned), and the dictatorship can do whatever it wants. One less thing for Neighborhood Councils to deal with, even though it’s pretty specific that this violates the Plan.
The Takeaway
So now what do we have from the City’s brain trust? Effective July 1, the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council becomes a bunch of Zombies, that’s what.
The rules say that the term for NC Board members is two years, which means that the current Board terms out at the end of June. Effective July 1, there will not be a single elected member of the Board of Directors, in direct violation of the Plan which implements the Charter.
So on July 1, there will be no GPNC. Only a bunch of unelected stakeholders pretending to be alive. Sounds like zombies to me.
So much for the Charter change which set up a system of locally elected Neighborhood Councils to keep the City Council and the Mayor honest.
This laughingstock excuse for an “Election” system needs to be fundamentally changed or they should simply abandon the whole thing on the grounds that the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles, the City Attorney, and the 15 Council members are totally incapable of implementing a Charter Reform which established Neighborhood Councils. Think about it.
Oh wait, they can’t abandon a part of the Charter without an Amendment to the Charter. Where do I sign up?
(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
