CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD—(This is another article in a continuing campaign to inform, educate and energize Angelenos on the reformation of city government … explaining the how, the why and the possibilities.) We've been arguing about what's wrong with the neighborhood council system for sixteen years. The problems we had at the beginning are, by and large, still with us. They were locked into the city's Charter language by the municipal election of 1999, which approved Article IX: Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. We've been forced to deal with that section's inadequacies ever since.
So here is my next idea for substantial reform in Los Angeles city government:
Delete Article IX from the City Charter.
In one fell swoop, we will eliminate numerous irritations. Here is a short list of problem areas that cannot be fixed if we stick with the current Article IX language, but could be fixed if we replace it with something better:
Neighborhood council election disputes
Suffocating rules regarding the ability to spend money
The existence of a Board of Neighborhood Commissioners that has outlived its original purposes
The existence of a Department of Neighborhood Empowerment that has failed to understand how it could truly be useful to the neighborhood councils
Interference by inadequately trained staff from the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
The danger that the city will take over your neighborhood council without demonstrable reason or rational purpose
Lack of neighborhood council authority to do something (anything, actually) about land use decisions
Those are just some of the problem areas.
Previous reform attempts: The Neighborhood Council Review Commission
The original Charter language required that a review commission be created a few years into the existence of neighborhood councils. Thus we had the Neighborhood Council Review Commission (NCRC). The NCRC worked hard and held lots of meetings. The problem was that the NCRC made a conscious choice not to get into topics that would require tinkering with the Charter language.
The NCRC actually made a lot of recommendations and many were enacted by action of the City Council. Still, in staying away from Charter reform, the NCRC could not take on the deeper questions that continue to plague us.
There have been many other conversations about fixing the system over the years, but they have all foundered because of unwillingness to take on the problem of changing the wording of Article IX.
A more ambitious road to reform
We are trying to consider a deeper, more carefully thought out process of reform using a process which involves multiple ballot initiatives. Some of these initiatives would necessarily involve amending the city's Charter.
Reform of Charter Article IX is of obvious interest. The earlier limitation that hobbled the NCRC can be ignored if we take this approach.
The remaining questions are twofold:
Can such a reform process actually succeed?
If it can succeed, what should replace Article IX?
What would a better neighborhood council system look like?
If we want to think about fixing the neighborhood council system, we need to repeal and replace (there's a nice phrase, eh?) Charter Article IX. If you are curious about what I am saying, I invite you to read through Article IX here. It's actually pretty short.
What we know from discussions with people who were part of the Charter review process -- the people who created Article IX -- is that it was put together hurriedly by merging ideas from the work of two competing Charter commissions. Some participants liked the results. But when you go through the wording carefully, you find that there ambiguities and contradictions. There are requirements (diversity for example) that are hard to define unambiguously when you are trying to create the specific structure and wording of a set of bylaws.
Mostly, we've all struggled over the process of figuring out exactly who is (and is not) eligible to participate both as voter and as office holder. After nearly two decades, we are still stuck with the fact that we don't know who exactly belongs to the pool of eligible voters for any neighborhood council. This is a problem that is built into the Charter language and has been exacerbated by legislative blundering by the City Council. It seems like every time the City Council tries to fix the definition of stakeholder, it makes things worse.
Article IX has to go.
The actual form of a new Article IX depends on additional factors
If we take reform far enough that it modifies the structure and organization of the City Council itself, then the ultimate wording of an Article IX replacement will depend on all those other factors. For example, a major element of reform ought to be taking away the monopolistic authority held by individual City Council representatives. My personal view is that local decisions now made by one man need to be made by a panel of at least three people.
If we were to make that change, then neighborhood councils would obviously take on a different tone. The current system in which local neighborhood councils kiss up to that one person in authority would be replaced by something that is more deliberative.
We should also be thinking about whether a new, reformed system of neighborhood councils should include any actual authority. An earlier formulation of Article IX involved some power of oversight regarding land use decisions. The property developers didn't like it, and a last minute compromise was made in which neighborhood councils became strictly advisory.
We will want to think about whether we should add back some real authority to neighborhood councils. But if we were to do that, then we would also want to think about who gets elected to neighborhood council boards, and how that will happen. For example, limiting voters in neighborhood council elections to registered voters within the neighborhood council district would open up a world of possibilities. Neighborhood council candidates could be on the ballot during general elections. Incidentally, that's also how members of political party county central committees are elected, not to mention City Council members and candidates for the House of Representatives, the state Senate, and the state Assembly.
This would, of course, narrow the eligible pool of candidates and voters, but it would only be narrowed in a way that most other elections are already narrowed. It would have the distinct advantage that people elected to neighborhood council boards would be recognized as being legitimately elected. It would be a relief from the current system in which boards can be taken over by organized groups from outside the district.
The undocumented
When the neighborhood council system was proposed, it was clear that the intent was to bring undocumented residents into the civic and governmental process. After all, they also live here and are affected by what government does. If we are willing to forego putting neighborhood council elections on the municipal election ballot, then there is no reason we couldn't continue to include the undocumented in our neighborhood council elections and keep them eligible to sit on governing boards.
The difference between such a system and our current system is that residency would be the one defining factor. We would no longer suffer through those interminable arguments about who should be allowed to vote, and whether or not each election was legitimate. If you live in the district, you can vote and hold office.
What to include in a revamped Article IX?
Do we really need a Board of Neighborhood Commissioners? That's a weighty question because real reform of the city government ought to include a serious look at whether we need commissions at all. Please notice that serious thinkers have been asking this question for many years.
The problem with the BONC, in my view, is that after it fulfilled its fundamental mission of certifying the original neighborhood councils, it had little more to do. Each generation of BONC commissioners went looking for things to do, which in practice meant suggesting changes to the system which involved headaches for neighborhood council participants. Typically, this involved finding new areas of training to be required of board members. It's been a perpetual battle.
Another thing we ought to be considering is the question of neighborhood council funding. Should neighborhood councils get so much money that they have to find ways to spend it, usually by funding social welfare organizations and local construction projects? If the proper function of neighborhood councils is to bring the people and the government closer together, then it makes little sense to turn neighborhood councils into small scale granting agencies. The original function of neighborhood councils -- to be directly political as the peoples' lobby -- gets submerged in all the rules and regulations about how to fill out budget forms and submit reimbursement requests to the city. We ought to be asking the deeper question: What is our fundamental mission, and how much money does it take to fulfill it?
Let's have a serious discussion for once
As CityWatch engages in its year-long discussion of government reform, let's include a blue-sky approach to thinking about the neighborhood council system. For once, this discussion will not be limited to a few people appointed by the mayor or by the City Council members, but can include anyone who has something to say. A good model for this kind of discussion was the Bylaws Task Force that was created by a citywide alliance and which invited everyone to participate. We got the kind of outspoken people who don't get mayoral appointments, and we profited by their contributions.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
