Neighborhood Councils: We Had to Destroy the System in Order to Save It

GELFAND’S WORLD-The local neighborhood council system that speaks truth to power is in danger of being turned into an infantilized helpmate to power. Partly it's the death of a thousand cuts, as new rules and policies pile up. But a recent proposal goes way further, as it would seriously change the balance of power between the once-independent neighborhood councils and the city agencies and commission that ostensibly protect them. 

The topic of this discussion is a proposed ordinance that would give the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC) and the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) new powers over the unpaid volunteers who serve on neighborhood council boards. 

Technically, the proposed ordinance creates a grievance process under which people with complaints against neighborhood council governing boards can ask for redress. The proposed system is superficially rational, as it creates a tiered system of complaint vs. response. Under certain circumstances, a complaint will be referred to a newly created grievance panel. That panel will have the authority to hear the complaint and to propose remedies. The remedies can involve something as simple as admonishment, or something as drastic as removal of one or more elected governing board members. The grievance panel punishments can then be enforced by the BONC and DONE, who can also increase them or reduce them. 

In other words, the proposed system allows the city through its appointed agencies and boards to overrule the decisions of voters, in their choices of neighborhood council governing board members. 

The proposed changes would give the BONC and DONE the power to impose work requirements in the form of mandated training on the unpaid volunteers who fill neighborhood council boards. As mentioned above, it will also give them the authority to remove elected board members from office. What kind of elected office is it if it can be undone by bureaucratic fiat? The idea of being elected to represent the people in opposition to government malfeasance, the original idea behind neighborhood councils, will be undermined. 

The proposed ordinance has other malign elements, as we shall discuss. 

The inspiration for the proposed ordinance is the decade-old suggestion to create something called the neighborhood council grievance process. Technically, it refers to the system whereby a member of the public files a complaint against a neighborhood council for some infraction. What kind of infraction a neighborhood council might commit is an interesting question, because these bodies don't give out parking tickets or take peoples' homes under eminent domain. Basically, they hold meetings where they hear from the public, pass resolutions, and get to spend a small amount of the taxpayers' money on cultural and civic improvement projects. That's about it. 

Still, the neighborhood council system has been the subject of a lot of complaining over its short 14 year lifetime. In the early days when neighborhood councils ran their own elections, some people would complain about the way elections had been conducted. The election problem seems to have been fixed, in that we have a system which defines the procedures, makes sure that they are followed, and provides for hearing complaints in a set manner. DONE is recognized as doing a good job in overseeing neighborhood council elections, so a broad brush grievance system seems to be unnecessary in this regard. 

The next problem, the one that the current proposal seems designed to fix, is the end result of those neighborhood council elections. Evidently, the city's officials, agencies, and commissions are not always happy with who gets chosen in those open and democratic elections. The City Council in conjunction with the City Attorney is trying to find a way to force elected board members of neighborhood councils to fit the expected personality pattern. Square pegs don't belong in this government of round holes. 

{module [1177]}

Let me add a caveat at this point in the discussion. The proponents of these new rules have some points to make, which we need to consider. 

The problem, as explained to me by a BONC member, is that there are difficulties that arise in the conduct of some of the city's 96 neighborhood councils. It is a system in which each council elects somewhere around 20 board members (the number varies), and not all of these board members are emotionally mature enough to follow the rules. In practice, this has meant a few board members who say insulting things to members of the public, and who don't shut up at the times that the rules require. As I have discussed in earlier pieces, sometimes a board member's conduct gets to be frankly abusive. 

The argument is that one or two people can make the conduct of a neighborhood council board so irritating to the public that the council loses some of its ability to function. In short, the system results in some flakes getting elected to neighborhood council board seats, in spite of the open electoral process that is supposed to filter them out. The question involves what, if anything, to do about this kind of problem. 

Legislative bodies such as the U.S. congress have rules that allow them to expel a member under particularly trying circumstances. These powers are enforced only in extreme circumstances. For example, the convicted felon Rod Wright continued in the California legislature for quite some time, and only public pressure got him to resign. Similarly, the Los Angeles City Council looked the other way after Councilman Alarcon was convicted of perjury. 

Still, there is no indication that Wright or Alarcon acted in a disruptive way while in office. An ethical violation, even at the felony level, seemed to be acceptable to their colleagues. Screaming fits would not have been. 

What, if anything, would be the right thing to do about complaints against neighborhood councils and their board members? The City Charter and the original legislation that created the whole system considered the idea of a grievance process. The original rules from 2001 merely required that a neighborhood council, in order to be officially certified, should have a grievance system. This worked fine for most of us, for the simple reason that we didn't get any grievances. In some places, flakey people would write to DONE, and DONE would filter out their complaints. Some few neighborhood councils had written fairly strict grievance procedures and then found themselves saddled with one or two people who filed grievance after grievance. Those people have become known as serial grievers to the city officials. 

A grievance process that would lift the burden of serial grievers from the victimized councils will be of use. But in other things, the city seems to be going in the wrong direction. Let's look at the remedies section of the proposed ordinance that is now before the Education and Neighborhoods Committee of the Los Angeles City Council. In the following wording, DONE is referred to as The Department. I have bolded some of the wording for purposes of emphasis: 

(e) Remedies. The Department, in its discretion, may impose the remedy or combination of remedies recommended by the Regional Grievance Panel or may impose a remedy or remedies of its own discretion. If the Department imposes a remedy or remedies that are more severe than the recommendation of the Regional Grievance Panel, the Department shall inform the Regional Grievance Panel of the basis for its decision. The remedies that may be recommended by a Regional Grievance Panel or imposed by the Department alone or in combination, are as follows: 

(1) Issuance of an admonishment or warning to the Neighborhood

Council board or individual board member or members;

(2) Issuance of a directive for the Neighborhood Council board to take

corrective affirmative action;

(3) Issuance of a directive requiring the Neighborhood Council Board or an individual board member or members to undergo mandated training; or an individual board member or members to engage in mediation;

(5) Suspension of board operations until mandated trainings are taken

by the board or board member or members;

(6) Temporary suspension of Neighborhood Council funding;

(7) Placement of the operations of the Neighborhood Council Board

under the control and supervision of the Department;

(8) Suspension of an individual board member or members;

(9) Imposition of an election challenge remedy, as authorized by the

Department; or

(10) Initiation of the de-certification process or the process to declare board seats vacant pursuant to Section 22.810.1(e) of this Code.

In summary, the proposed legislation, now before the City Council, makes a joke of the idea of electoral representation. Under these rules, the city can force elected board members to take mandated training under pain of suspension. If you don't obey, the city can kick you off the board, thereby negating the decision made by your neighborhood council's voters. The city can kick one or two people off a board, or it can remove the board as a whole, free elections be damned. 

Another possible remedy under these rules is mandated mediation. Notice that this isn't defined as an offer, but as a directive. 

There is one slightly positive aspect of the new rules. There will be a limit to the number of grievances that any one person can file in a year. This is both a good thing and a bad thing, in that it helps to filter out the true flakes, but it gives a license to a board that intends to engage in retaliatory misconduct. Just keep count of the griever's complaints, knowing that when he has reached the magic number, you can insult him to your heart's content. 

Suppose we stipulate that there have been some bad actors in the neighborhood council system, and we would like to improve the polite conduct of our meetings. What would be the appropriate thing to do? I understand the concerns that underlie the proposed ordinance, but I think that it can use some tweaking. 

First of all, the idea of mandated training has to go. This is one of those obvious things that shouldn't require a lot of discussion. My neighborhood council does not have the power to order my City Councilman to come to our meeting and submit to a training class. Why should he have that power over our board members? It's fundamentally un-American. 

Second of all, the power to remove an elected board member from office should be better defined. The ordinance needs to better specify the magnitude of the offense that is required for action to be taken. The ordinance also needs to expand the right to self defense. 

The structure of grievance hearings specified in the proposed ordinance make a mockery of the right to a fair trial. There are no limits to what can be excluded as evidence, but there are strict limits on the amount of time and testimony that the accused is allowed to present. Finally, there is no indication in the proposed ordinance that the accused will enjoy the services of a hearing chairman who is competent in the law or in neighborhood council rules. 

The proposed ordinance ignores the sacred American principle of due process, because the makeup of the grievance panels is not specified, the rules of procedure are not specified, and the right of the accused to present a full and comprehensive defense is specifically refused. You get your ten minutes, and that's it. 

The idea of taking the hodge podge of grievance procedures that exist in 96 sets of bylaws, and replacing them with one universal set of rules, has been floating around for at least a decade. By disclosure, I will point out that I have participated in all 3 working groups created by DONE over the years, and I led a discussion of how to do a grievance process in the Bylaws Task Force. Every one of these workshops and task forces ultimately suggested the creation of regional panels that would hear grievances against neighborhood councils. This is also what the proposed ordinance prescribes (probably because it was suggested by DONE after the last of those workshops). 

Disagreements, such as they existed, involved the limits on what a grievance panel could impose on a guilty neighborhood council. The current concept wraps the process of decertification into the overall grievance structure. DONE and the BONC have always had the authority to propose decertification and to impose it. That is nothing new. The ability to abolish an entire governing board, or even to remove one or two board members, is something entirely new. It seems to be an attempt to give the BONC a remedy short of full decertification. I understand that it is supposed to be a positive step, but I see it as a real danger, particularly if we should suffer from another mayor or DONE General Manager who is hostile to the neighborhood council system. 

Here is an alternative proposal that would offer a way to remove obstructive board members while preserving the principle of electoral rights. The BONC can pass a rule that would be binding on all neighborhood councils that would create the power of recall of board members. If the BONC passes it as policy, it becomes the equivalent of inserting the new rule into each neighborhood council's bylaws. This would have the virtue of keeping neighborhood council governing board selection close to the people, and would provide for checks and balances. Perhaps a new rule could create a requirement that two percent of a district's residents have to sign a petition, following which a recall election would take place. This would solve the problem of difficult board members without radically modifying the current balance of power between the local councils and the city's central government. 

The city's Education and Neighborhoods Committee can expedite the process by recommending the creation of the grievance panel system, since this will provide for independent fact finding. But the E&N Committee should remove the more drastic provisions and replace them with a recommendation that DONE and BONC develop a recall provision that would be binding on all neighborhood councils.

 

(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for City Watch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw