Grassroots Candidate Fed Up with ‘I’ll Scratch Your Back Vote Trading’ at City Hall

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THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-As those of you who regularly read CityWatch know, the LA City Council seems to engage in “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” vote-trading, as CityWatch’s Richard Lee Abrams wrote here back in July. “No councilmember will vote “no” on any project in his or her district. As a result, any project which a councilmember places on the City Council agenda unanimously passes. They’ve got a 99.9 percent unanimous passage rate,” which is statistically impossible. The passage rate isn’t just a majority vote but requires that every single councilmember present must vote “yes” every single time, no matter how many laws a project would break. 

Despite coverage by media outlets including the LA Times, the Council continues to do business as usual, citing that members are immune to Penal Code § 86 because the mental processes of councilmembers “confidential and privileged.” The result? Runaway projects, spending, and a Council that serves the needs of developers far more than it serves constituents. 

Caney Arnold has thrown his hat in the City Council race in District 15 to turn this around. Arnold, who has a background in Air Force acquisition and program management, is fed up with what he’s witnessed in the Council. Grassroots democracy, government transparency and accountability are the cornerstones of his campaign. I sat down with Arnold to discuss why he decided to run and the details of his platform. 

Arnold says, “The main thing that got me excited in politics again was Bernie, a progressive candidate to get behind. At the same time, I went to (Councilmember) Joe Buscaino’s town hall on homelessness. I was trying to advocate for a mom and her two kid but there was so much red tape. The paperwork was daunting.” He also noticed that Buscaino was moving homeless people out of encampments in San Pedro. (In September, CityWatch reported on the Council Homeless Strategy Committee’s authorization of $615,000 for the leasing and construction of storage facilities for the homeless in San Pedro, without prior notice being given to the Harbor Area’s neighborhood councils.) 

“The focus on moving people from place to place doesn’t help anybody, [it’s] just costing the city more money on police, sanitation, mental health workers. People are already in the system or on a waitlist for help. This is just a newspaper or photo op,” he added. “The system is inefficient. The method should be to secure housing first to help get people off the streets. Taking them out of the environment would take care of them and reduce nuisance on the street. It’s a win win for all and what is used in many other cities.” 

The frustration Arnold met as a volunteer addressing the homeless crisis in San Pedro and surrounding areas led him to run for Neighborhood Council. Once he was on the Neighborhood Council, he says he started to receive CityWatch and became aware of other issues that concerned him, such as campaign finance. 

“I started to look at campaign contributions on ethics websites and was amazed. A little after that, I had seen an article in the LA Times on an investigation involving the Sea Breeze apartments in Harbor Gateway,” he adds. (The LA Times reported over 100 donors directly or indirectly connected with a developer had contributed over $600,000 to politicians while the $72 million Sea Breeze apartment complex was up for approval.) 

“On one side, I was excited about this weakness but on the other side, I was discouraged. Every councilperson seemed to be in the same situation. It wasn’t like Joe was different from anyone else,” Arnold says of his decision to run. “We spent 84 hours, gathering 839 signatures, door to door, at shopping malls to get on the ballot. We don’t have $300,000 like Joe does but I have an appointment to talk to the city councilperson in West Hollywood. I’ve talked with loads of people in Watts.” 

“This is grassroots. Someone like me can decide to get off the couch. All it takes is someone with energy and motivation to get out there and do it. There are lots of excuses why things cannot get done. I thought someone needs to run. I looked in the mirror and saw that I was that somebody so I ran,” says Arnold.

In my next column, Caney Arnold and I discuss his ideas to solve specific problems and issues in the city.

 

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.