CITY HALL-Last week did not feature the City Council’s finest moments. Maybe it was because the members were bored, lazy, or not paying attention. Maybe it’s because most of them are new, and haven’t learned their jobs yet.
Or maybe it’s because they were trying to pull a fast one, and got caught.
The first fiasco occurred on Wednesday when the City Council approved ordinances that would have given 8.25% pay increases over the next 18 months to city employees who are not represented by unions, which includes the city’s general managers.
After it was passed (unanimously of course), an alert City Hall media corps asked the mayor and city council members why they wanted to give salary hikes to the city’s highest-paid executives.
An “alarmed” City Council President Herb Wesson (photo) called the action a “mistake,” and promised to make corrections quickly.
But Wesson and the mayor sat on the Executive Employees Relations Committee that met in secret to tell the Office of City Attorney how to write the ordinances. At this point, it is not clear if the city attorney’s office misunderstood the directions, or if the city council members knew exactly what they were doing.
Just four days after the city attorney’s paperwork was delivered to the Personnel and Animal Welfare Committee, it was approved by the committee. A private decision had already been made to have the matter considered by the full City Council the next day.
I read the accompanying report from City Administrative Officer (CAO), the city’s budget guru, and it was clear at a glance that the salaries of general managers were included.
But to make it more embarrassing for the city council, the CAO had sent them a letter a day before the council’s vote stating that he would be declining his pay increases should the ordinances pass.
Anyone who read the letter knew that the other general managers would be getting raises too.
The normal process to rectify an error by the council is for the members to vote to reconsider the vote at its next meeting. However, the council wanted to rush the items item through the system, so they also voted to send the ordinances to the mayor “forthwith.” That means to walk the paperwork immediately to the mayor’s office, and avoid the normal process.
That action would eliminate the ability of the council to reconsider the vote the ordinances because they’re sitting in the mayor’s office.
But that didn’t discourage the City Council. Two days later on Friday, they simply voted to “unsend” the ordinances. Then they quickly enacted a new set of ordinances, and, you guessed it, sent those “forthwith” to the mayor.
There are a lot of reasons for concern here.
First, each city council member has more staff people than any other elected official in the nation, except for U.S. senators. None of them apparently read or understood what was about to be voted on.
Second, no one ever explained the reason for the rush. I asked this question of a veteran City Hall staff member who responded by asking me, “Isn’t that the way it has always been done?”
And that is my point. It has always been done this way. When the city council doesn’t want to give the media or the public time to ask questions, it waits until the last minute to put the items on its agenda. Or, even if not facing a manufactured time crunch, it will just simply speed up the process.
But wait! There’s more!
On Friday, when the council was correcting its “mistake” on the salary increases, a disturbing motion was approved.
A friend of mine who used to work at City Hall, and who lives in West Los Angeles, is constantly telling me about the frustration of seeing city streets torn up by developers and utility companies shortly after the city has repaved them.
Maybe because he wasn’t the only person to complain, the City Council passed a law in 2003 aimed at those who want to tear up a street within a year after the city has resurfaced it. The law requires the outsiders to resurface the entire street block.
The Friday motion asked the council waive this law for the owner of a Burger King who wanted to install a gas line. We’re not talking a small business person here. The corporation owns over 100 Burger King restaurants, and a slew of other properties.
The Budget and Finance Committee scheduled a discussion of the item for April 7 giving the minimum amount of public notice, and unanimously approved the waiver.
Four days later, again with the minimum public notice, the city council approved it.
What makes this action especially notorious is that the council’s own Chief Legislative Analyst wrote a report that, among other things, clearly pointed out that the law did not allow the city council to issue such a waiver. The city attorney’s representative was in the Council Chamber ready to explain that fact, but no council member seemed interested in being told what they couldn’t legally do.
Might makes right.
Neighborhood councils, who have been bullied for years into following the letter of the law regarding how run their meetings, can play an important role in remedying this systemic problem.
My next column will list changes that the neighborhood councils can pursue if they want to protect their legal rights to have enough time to weigh in on decisions before they are made at City Hall.
(Greg Nelson is a former general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, was instrumental in the creation of the LA Neighborhood Council System, served as chief of staff for former LA City Councilman Joel Wachs … and occasionally writes for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 31
Pub: Apr 15, 2014
