"Something In It That Can Repulse Everyone"

Last night, the former DONE GM (this is city lingo and you'll understand right below) wrote a lengthy e-mail, equaling out to more than 5 pages on paper, about Prop R. If you don't know about Prop R or much about Neighborhood Councils, here's a good start from the "No on Prop R" point of view:

Neighborhood Council Board Members:
For those of you who don’t know me, I recently retired as the general manager [GM] of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment [DONE].

One of the reasons that I retired is that I wanted to have more freedom to speak out in support of Neighborhood Councils, and so I could more effectively help them increase their power. Another reason is so I wouldn’t have to wear a suit and tie anymore.

I was involved in the development of our city’s system of Neighborhood Councils from the beginning, and I now want to spend my retirement time in service to the Neighborhood Councils. It is my passion.
Several Neighborhood Councils have asked for my help with problems they were having with the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. Sometimes it’s just a matter clarifying the facts behind rumors. Other times it involves developing a successful strategy for a Neighborhood Council that feels it has no other place to go for assistance. I am happy to help. I owe the Neighborhood Councils a tremendous debt of gratitude.

The problems that most Neighborhood Councils have been experiencing are not limited to a single Neighborhood Council, but they are marbled throughout the system.

Therefore, it is becoming increasingly clear that the best answer to the problems is the ability of the Neighborhood Councils to join together in resolving them. There IS strength in numbers. Solidarity DOES work.

Neighborhood Councils working together to solve common problems is something that the designers of system always envisioned.

Helping Neighborhood Councils help each other is something to which I will be devoting a great deal of time. I sincerely believe that power isn’t given -- it’s taken.

Therefore, I’d like you know about a major effort that is being led by the Neighborhood Councils: opposition to Proposition R on the November 7, 2006 ballot – the measure that would give the City Council members an extra term, weaken the city’s ethics laws, and that would further empower the lobbyists.

This measure began life as a Charter amendment, proposed by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles that would increase term limits. If it had stopped there, we wouldn’t have experienced the parade of horribles that followed.

Their polling showed that such a proposal would be in serious trouble with the voters. A scheme was developed to confuse the voters by tossing in some changes to the city’s ethics laws, calling them “reforms,” and then promoting the whole package a “good government” measure.

Shockingly, a motion was submitted in the City Council on Friday, July 14 to place this measure on the ballot. Because this came up at literally the last minute, it was scheduled to be voted upon by the City Council just two business days later on Tuesday, July 18. But no one had yet seen the proposal.

I know you won’t believe this next part. It happened but I still don’t believe it. It’s like a bad dream.

The actual proposal, all 13 pages, showed up at the Office of the City Clerk and the City Council on Tuesday morning … just moments before the first crucial vote was to be taken.

Unless everyone in the Council Chamber was an Evelyn Wood honor graduate, it’s a good guess that nobody had read and understood this proposal. Although the Brown Act requires that copies be available for the public, none were.

Regardless, there was no way for a visiting Neighborhood Council member to read the proposal, have a meeting of the board, and understand the measure well enough to have a vote before the City Council members staked out their positions and took the first crucial vote to place it on the ballot. The decision was made before lunchtime.

This is especially important because City Charter Section 907 guarantees that Neighborhood Councils receive notice “as soon as practical”, and that they receive “a reasonable opportunity to provide input before decisions are made.”

This provision was added to the City Charter to recognize the special place that Neighborhood Councils have in the system, and to prevent the City Council from doing exactly what they did.

While the City Attorney was drafting the legal language for the ballot measure, he warned the City Council that the proposal was on shaky legal ground because state election law doesn’t permit two issues to be combined to deceive the voters. He also found two provisions among the so-called ethics “reforms” that he said would actually weaken our ethics laws.

One provision would allow lobbyists to avoid disclosing who they are working for if they agree to wait and get paid at the end after the matter has been decided. This is especially important to Neighborhood Councils because they are often visited by lobbyists. It’s the complete opposite of transparency.

The other provision would require more people to register as lobbyists and be subject to the restrictions that come with that designation, such as union representatives. We didn’t make that up. It comes from the law firm that was hired by the Chamber of Commerce to help design the scheme. By the way, that law firm represents the lobbyists, and has appeared before the City Ethics Commission arguing that a certain lobbyist requirement should be eased.

City Controller Laura Chick said, “I do not think in its current form it should go on the ballot, and if it does, it should not pass.” According to the Los Angeles Times, she said that worst feature of the measure is its “lack of transparency and clarity. This should have been a straightforward request to the voters on its merits, but to try to cover it and couch it and package it, to me, is exactly the wrong message.”

The City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo was more blunt. He said, “The people of Los Angeles have been cheated.”

The proposal was submitted so near the deadline that the City Ethics Commission wasn’t able to meet, scrutinize it, and provide input. It’s a good guess that it would have been able to spot these provisions that the City Attorney said actually weaken the ethics laws.

Ethics Commission Bill Boyarksy, a former editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, called the proposal “outrageous” and said that the City Council “showed absolute contempt for the Ethics Commission.”

The shame of it all is that if the proponents weren’t able to present their proposals in advance, the two issues could have been placed on the March, 2007 ballot.

This matter was moving so fast because of an upcoming legal deadline, that if there were to be an argument on the ballot opposing the measure, someone would have to act quickly.

Within days, Jason Lyon (former co-chair of the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council and Jeff Jacobberger (board member of the Mid City WEST Community Council) asked and were designated to write the argument despite attempts by powerful forces to discourage them from doing so.

A few Neighborhood Council leaders immediately jumped in to help them with the immediate task of writing the ballot argument, the rebuttal argument, and finding signers for both. Last Thursday, they met all the deadlines.

In another fast-moving event, Jeff filed a petition with the Superior Court on behalf of resident and voter, Dan Pasley. The petition charged that the argument submitted by the pro side contained one major misleading and incorrect statements, and two others. It asked that the court order the City Clerk to change that language.

In court last Thursday morning, the proponents conceded that our major complaint was valid. That language will be stricken from their ballot argument.

The pro side hired a prominent law firm, Kaufman Downing, LLP, to file its own petition claiming that corrections are needed in our argument.

The hearing was this morning, Thursday, August 31, and the side representing the interests of neighborhood council prevailed on nearly every point, and won on its major request which was that the ballot title (many voters only read the title) was deceptive. The judge ordered the title be changed to clearly state that the proposal would "lengthen" term limits for the City Council members. The City Council had changed the wording to make the purpose of the measure less clear to voters.

I believe that this whole effort is extremely important for the Neighborhood Councils because it’s a golden opportunity for them to join together behind a common and important goal.

I don’t need to tell you that this may be the mother of all David vs. Goliath battles.

We must now begin the process of creating a massive grass-roots campaign effort.

A website has been launched at www.NotPropR.org. It is in its infancy. The goal is that it will include all articles, documents, updates, and all the information you will need to help.

Already the Harbor Gateway North, Tarzana, Winnetka, Granada Hills North, Sun Valley Neighborhood Councils, and the Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils have passed resolutions opposing Proposition R. A sample resolution can be found on the website. Hopefully, every neighborhood council will join together in this effort.

If you have a valuable skill that you’d like to offer, please contact us at info@NotPropR.org. We’re looking for leaders and workers.

If we don’t hear from you, we will be contacting you and urging you to join this historic movement. This measure is so bad that there is something in it that can repulse everyone.

It is important that all neighborhood councils be involved from Day One. This is Day One. A lot of people are watching this one to see if Neighborhood Councils are ready to make the leap into the world of real political power.

~ Greg Nelson