LA’s Empowerment Department Gets a Bloody Nose

In traditional American justice, we generally insist on innocence until proven guilty. In the case of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council (CeSPNC), it was guilty unless or until they could prove their own innocence. The General Manager of DONE even pointed out in a public meeting that the allegations against CeSPNC were serious. Not, mind you, the facts. Not the evidence. Not the tape recordings and the photographs. Just the allegations. 

And in this era of our supposed democracy, that seems to be all that is necessary for a city agency to take punitive action. Just complain against some person or persons, and DONE will put them on hold. In this case, it was a pretty tangible threat to take over the actions of the council. They call it “placing the council in exhaustive efforts” which would have paralyzed any ability of the council to do its proper business. The last time DONE did this to the CeSPNC (just a couple of years ago), the results were a clown car. 

By the way, the phrase “exhaustive efforts” goes back to another era in which DONE was supposed to help out councils which really needed help. Before asking the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners to revoke such a council’s certification, DONE was required by law to take exhaustive efforts to fix the situation. In the old formulation, the phrase exhaustive efforts did not refer to the process of hijacking the council’s processes. It merely referred to attempts by DONE to help out, just in case it would help prevent the commissioners from pulling the plug on the entire enterprise. In the old days, if a council did not hold a board meeting for several months (there were such) then DONE would inform the board members in advance of making an attempt to dissolve the council. 

But in this era, DONE is allowed to take over the actions of a council entirely. A council in “exhaustive efforts” cannot hold regular public board meetings without DONE’s permission, and usually this involves having some DONE staffer run the meeting (usually badly). 

DONE gets a bloody nose 

In the case of Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council, the board was threatened with DONE action if it were to engage in the process of replacing its president prior to the determination by the Labor Relations division of the City Attorney’s office as to whether or not members of the current board had done something bad to her. 

The logic of this move, as weird as it seems, was that the right to replace the board president can be withheld if one or more members of the board can be accused of a thought crime such as racism. In this case, the allegation seems to have included harassment with underlying racist intent. The public has not as yet been acquainted with any of the evidence (if there is any) nor has the public been informed as to the relevance of any such charges with regard to the right of a lawfully elected neighborhood council board to carry out its business. 

So here we are, in the middle of February, 2020, and the CeSPNC is still, as far as the public knows, in a bind as to what it can or cannot do in terms of picking its own officers. 

But in the meanwhile, one board member received a letter from the office of the City Attorney. 

On Feb 12, the deputy City Attorney sent the following message. I have removed only the proper names: 

Dear Mr. . . . 

As you know, we were assigned to investigate allegations that . . .  was harassed based on her ethnicity.  We thank you for your cooperation with the investigation and your continued patience.  We have concluded the investigation and found the allegations to be unsubstantiated.  Again, thank you for your cooperation in this matter. 

So there it is. DONE took away the rights of a lawfully elected board to act in the best interests of the public, and did this based only on an allegation. The allegation has not been demonstrated to be correct. 

Now, DONE has had its nose bloodied by a finding coming from the Labor Relations office of the City Attorney. I wonder what DONE will now do about it? Will there be a public apology? Seems unlikely. My guess is that DONE will hide behind the claim that they acted properly, and will avoid considering whether they had some obligation to balance the rights of the public vs the rights of one individual to have her case heard at some point. 

But we keep coming down to the same question. How can a government agency dismantle the rights of a person or persons based only on a secret allegation. Courts demand more, and even in the case of restraining orders, the rights of a defendant to be informed of the allegations is a clear matter of law. 

Those of us who have been through all the different DONE administrations (going back nearly 20 years at this point) are becoming concerned that we are entering another one of the bad eras. There may be time to recover and get things back to normal, but there isn’t much time. 

Another point: In talking to the players in the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council story, I find that both sides have a point to make. The current president, the original maker of the harassment allegation, comes across as a nice person with good intentions. I suspect that she was not very well trained in how to run a board meeting when she came on, and a subset of the board is still trying to censure her for a mistake she made (several months ago) in agreeing to an expenditure without first getting board approval. This is indeed an error, but we have seen similar errors in other neighborhood councils over the years, and they usually got solved without so much drama. 

But in any case, a lawfully elected board such as CeSPNC has should be left alone to solve its own problems (or continue to struggle with them) on its own. 

We are long overdue for a serious reassessment of DONE’s authority. Perhaps we will begin the process at the next meeting of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition at the beginning of the month. 

Another Thing Entirely 

This weekend, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the town of Newhall, and the William S. Hart Ranch and Museum held a historical festival. The festival centered on the life and films of the early western movie star William S. Hart. Along the way, there was a marvelous showing (with musical accompaniment) of the Douglas Fairbanks classic The Mark of Zorro. It’s still a great film in this, the 100^th anniversary of its release. 

There was a separate room (in the old train station, a place worth visiting on its own) running silent slapstick comedies. You could tour Hart’s mansion (which you can do other times since it belongs to the Natural History Museum). The Hart mansion reminds me a bit of the old Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley (before it was badly damaged by flooding) or even a little of the Ahwanee hotel in Yosemite. There are also bison, ducks, and what appears to be an emu in a small zoo and among the extended acres of Hart’s original ranch. 

Guest speakers included Emmy award winner Stan Taffel (well known to Cinecon moviegoers), David Pierce from the Library of Congress film collection, and a surprise visitor from Paris, France, the celebrated film preserver and restorer Serge Bromberg. 

For me, the high point of the festival was the Slapstick & Melodrama Workshop. The performance chief of the Natural History Museum taught us how to do the kinds of things that silent actors did – how to move your head, your neck, your chest, your belly, and your hips, and how to do so starting at low intensity and gradually increasing the emotional (and melodramatic) force. Both the adults and the kids enjoyed the drills, and I got a little additional insight into what we see in the oldest films. 

By the way, the term slapstick comes from a device made from a couple of sticks that, when shaken, make a loud cracking sound.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])

-cw