CommentsCOMMENTARY-We couldn’t get rid of Trump. We have Councilmembers and City employees who have to be forced out of office for documented malfeasance.
And now Los Angeles has a General Manager in Raquel Beltrán who has appointed herself blessed with divine powers including the right to personally remove duly elected board members from positions to which they have been elected with no right of appeal.
Even if there may be reasons, we must have transparent procedures and due process. Not just allegations.
We need the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to enshrine the rights granted under the First Amendment to freedom of assembly.
We need the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to enshrine the rights granted under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments: there should be no illegitimate seizure of office without documented evidence of probable cause, and certainly not prior to due process.
We need the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to enshrine and enforce an accused’s rights under the Sixth Amendment to confront their accusers prior to trial let alone execution.
And I would like to think most Angelenos in this age of social media amplification would consider removal from office without a proper trial to be cruel and unusual punishment.
Neighborhood Councils and the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners should never agree to this proposed amendment to the Code of Conduct:
“If a Board Member or Committee Member is alleged to have violated either the City’s Workplace Equity Policy or the Commission’s Code of Conduct, the Department, with written approval from the General Manager, may immediately suspend the Board Member or Committee Member for a period of up to 90 days. Said Board Member or Committee Member shall not be eligible to act on any matter that comes before their Neighborhood Council Board or Committee and shall not be counted for the purpose of establishing a quorum of the Neighborhood Council Board or Committee.”
The foregoing relies on allegations. It relies on interpretation of documents that are new and/or in flux. It relies on a department in disrepute, on staff members in disrepute. It relies on a General Manager who is at odds with the people she is supposed to serve.
The proposal goes on to say:
“The Department shall be the sole decision-maker with respect to a suspension. The Board Member or Committee Member may not appeal the suspension decision.”
Yes, we as a City need to be able to enforce reasonable behavior in our elected officials but what is being proposed here is egregious and a clear overreach of power.
Immediate suspension may be appropriate for a person who is a clear and present physical danger to those around them but is it appropriate to disenfranchise the electorate on the whim of one person?
One person who has a habit of listening to a few extreme voices instead of the will of the majority?
The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment and its fearless leader have appeared as subjects in CityWatch so many times since the appointment of the current General Manager that one has to think of the old adage – where there is smoke, there’s fire.
(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)