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ACCORDING TO LIZ - “To earn and maintain the trust of the public, it is crucial for elected officials to abide by rigorous ethics standards and avoid conflicts of interest, yet there have been a number of violations in recent years.” So starts a new Council File for the Los Angeles City Council.
Only ”a number” of ethics violations in recent years?
Are Councilmembers even beholden to ethics rules? Or do they exist to serve those who fund their re-election campaigns?
The criminal activities of José Huizar, Mitch Englander, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Curran Price, John Lee, the offensive racism of Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo and Kevin De León – when will it ever end?
Then there is the up to $200,000 of the people’s money approved by the City Council to cover the personal costs of Huizar’s defense, because the very married father of four didn’t have the common decency to keep his pants zipped at the workplace. Voting money to protect their own when interests collide with the obligations of the City Attorney has unfortunately been a persistent practice over the decades.
As have demands on staff to become overtly or covertly complicit in criminality, such as the retroactive alteration of some of Huizar’s calendars to hide his meetings with lobbyists, or be the bagman, or just look the other way or risk their jobs.
A fish rots from the head down, so why should Angelenos be surprised that employees in many other departments have been asked to resign over fiscal misconduct rather than face public consequences, and the constant payoffs to complainants about police improprieties is a never-ending drain on City’s budget.
All this calls out for a strong and independent Ethics Commission – something Los Angeles was commended for as one the most comprehensive packages of local governmental ethics in the US when it was established in 1990.
But today lacks the ability to function effectively with the City keeping it perennially underfunded and Councilmembers stalling on approving appointments to fill empty Commission positions.
A recent nominee by Controller Kenneth Mejia was rejected out of hand in a farce worthy of daytime TV. Plus Council President Paul Krekorian is way out of compliance for the nomination of another.
And now these denizens of the City Hall Council Chambers have come up with a new plan – to establish a new “Office of Compliance with adequate staff and resources to review City Council and City Council Committee agendas to assist the ethically-challenged to identify potential problems in advance of votes to “help ensure greater public trust.”
Come again?
Is it that complex to say "no" to a bribe? How difficult is it to determine that engaging in discussions with and without lobbyists in closed-door meetings is potentially in violation of the Brown Act and these other pesky rules? Or that one should not use the power to promote to leverage a sexual relationship?
How disingenuous is it that one of the seconders of the motion is Paul – “I haven’t nominated anyone to the Ethics Commission yet” – Krekorian?
And who pays for the time our Councilmembers spend in those meetings with lobbyists?
Why spend the time and money to invent a new Band-Aid for the deep wound of corruption if not to avoid the scrutiny of existing oversight by our excellent Ethics Commission.
Unless there is even more slimy stuff still slithering under the lack-of-transparency tarp that our dysfunctional City Council has drawn over City Hall?
The authors of CF 23-1097 express anxiety about the pressing need to provide Councilmembers with additional assistance in identifying agenda items that might raise conflict-of-interest concerns. Yes, parsing those rules is more complex these days, but why establish a whole new Office when the questions could be more than adequately addressed by funding a few additional positions in the existing and experienced City Attorney’s Office and on the Ethics Commission’s staff.
If Dad brings parts home from his Mr. Muffler mechanics job to work on his own car, how different is that from his kids pocketing chocolate bars from the corner store? Shouldn’t those we elect to lead always be held to a more rigorous standard, not allowed to run loose in the candy shop.
Who benefits from trips to Vegas? And how?
And any Councilmember who doesn’t yet know that what happens in Vegas does NOT stay in Vegas should not be voting, let alone be deserving of any constituent’s vote.
To overcome the dystopia of our Orwellian City government, there is a very simple solution: immediately appoint credibly qualified appointees to fill the ranks of Ethics Commission, and fund it fully so they have the resources for diligent oversight and prosecution as intended when it was created.
Los Angeles definitely doesn’t need any more bureaucracy, and we the taxpayers certainly don’t need to pay for a whole department just to advise the City Councilmembers on what their own consciences and common sense should tell them.
If our remaining City Councilmembers are as squeaky clean as they would like us to believe, they have nothing to fear.
In the meantime, they will have saved the time and the money and the aggravation of yet another make-work committee spinning on that shaky wheel of City Hall.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and 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.)
