Nithya Raman talks to LAist about why she should be LA's next mayor (Transcript)

Here's a transcript of the conversation that took place Monday, April 20, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in front of a live audience of students and other guests.

Larry Mantle: Nithya Raman is running for mayor. She's in the middle of her second term as an L.A. City Council member.

Her district covers both sides of the Hollywood Hills, with Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, Hancock Park, Hollywood, Silver Lake, and Los Feliz within the fourth. Prior to running for the council, she headed a homelessness nonprofit and was an entertainment industry advocacy organization CEO as well. She emigrated from India to Louisiana at the age of 6, and has an undergraduate degree in political theory from Harvard and a master’s in urban planning from MIT. Councilmember Raman, welcome to AirTalk and LMU.

Nithya Raman: Thank you for having me.

Why she's running

Mantle: In more than four decades of covering elections, I don't think I've seen a candidate come in just the day before the closing of a race.

And I should say a prominent candidate. There have been lesser known people who've come in it, but for someone who's serving on the council, having the profile you did, just real briefly, what made you decide at the 11th hour to do it?

Raman: Well, the longstanding issues, I think they got a lot worse over the last couple of years, and particularly my frustrations deepened after our lack of preparation for the fires, watching both the lack of preparation before the fires and how we've been responding in the Palisades afterwards.

There has just been incident after incident where I have felt like there is a lack of urgency in the mayor's office and in leadership at City Hall that has taken us away from being able to understand the needs of Angelenos. And for me, as I was watching this mayor's race play out, I thought, I think like many of you that other people would get in the race.

That, at this time when I've been out on the campaign trail now for the past few weeks, I hear over and over again that Los Angeles feels like it's getting worse rather than better, that life is getting harder to live here rather than easier. At that time, I thought there would be a real discussion about L.A.'s future and what we could be doing to change the direction of the city and what we needed to be taking on as a city.

And I just didn't see that happening in this mayoral election. And to me, I'm still a relative newcomer to politics. I may have been on the council for the last five years, but many of my fellow Councilmembers have been in L.A. politics and California politics for many, many years.

For me, I don't plan to be a politician for the long term. For me, I got into this because I wanted to serve my city, and the idea of not being able to serve my city and take on our housing crisis, take on some of the issues that I think are really at the core of L.A. felt really tough for me.

Her view on the city's budget

Mantle: We're gonna get into some of those issues. In case you just joined us we're talking with L.A. City Councilmember, Nithya Raman, candidate for mayor.

Councilmember, this morning as we're recording this, for those listening on the radio, it will be yesterday morning, Mayor Bass released her proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. It includes the hiring of 510 police officers to replace officers expected to leave in the coming year. It would not grow the department, it is designed for it not to shrink.

Nearly $15 billion in spending, avoids layoffs, Inside Stay Safe would be funded (her homelessness program) for $104 million. Pretty much the same. Is there anything, and I know you haven't had a lot of time to pour over the fine print, but just looking at the top line numbers here in her proposal, anything that stands out to you that you think, no, I would do this differently.

Raman: Well, I think the reality is that where we are here in Los Angeles, this budget itself is testament to me to where we are in Los Angeles. The budget is trying to preserve a status quo, which is really depleted from before. What we are doing in this budget is, you know, I've only had it for an hour or so before this discussion.

So I haven't gotten into the details of it. I will say that it claims to increase services from last year on some key issues, including things like road repair, sidewalk repair, and things like that, by the way, issues that I've been talking about a lot on the campaign trail and highlighting the gaps that that we have in our city on these issues.

But the reality is that it is a tiny growth from what was an extraordinarily depleted moment. Last year's budget had a billion dollar budget deficit that was, in many ways, self-created through contracts the city couldn't afford that were signed the year prior and because we don't do a lot of things like liability management and good fiscal management at the city, that I think are essential to be doing in the mayor's office.

And as a result, we had a billion dollar budget deficit last year, and 1,600 layoffs were on the table, and we managed to stave off those layoffs by cutting all of our services down to the bone. That's why we have such low response times on fixing streetlights. That's why we have roads that are in such bad repair.

And so for me to see that we are trumpeting a slight increase in services from last year feels like a hollow improvement. Angelenos should not, in my opinion, be expecting so little from their government.

Mantle: I want to get to those contracts you mentioned that are now proving quite difficult financially for the city.

But this is the financial circumstance of Los Angeles. So if you were the mayor right now, someone just instantly made you mayor, how would your budget proposal be different given this reality?

Raman: Well, this budget proposal, given what we're grappling with, I think may not be significantly different from my own because we are grappling with such significant shortages.

However, I think I would be much more honest with Angelenos about where we are. I would not be going out there and telling people that this is a budget that's gonna resolve all of these issues. I would be honest about where we are and what we need to do in order to get out of our hole that we're in right now and also really think seriously in, not just this budget, but in every budget, about how we actually increase revenues as a city.

This is a conversation now. I've been in city hall for a little over five years. I'm really focused on trying to increase housing availability in the city, and to me, a big reason why I'm so focused on housing is not just because I wanna lower the cost of housing by having a lot more apartments built in the city, but also because we have to be thinking about how we grow our property tax base.

How do we actually think about a city that is vibrant and resilient into the future? How do we actually think about a city that grows? I would also wanna think about how we actually attract businesses to Los Angeles instead of watching them flee our city as we have seen over the past few years, we don't have a strategy in the city for thinking about how we actually have a joyful, ambitious path for the future.

Managing the city's union contracts

Mantle: Councilmember, I hear what you're saying, but you know, revenue is still on a historic high level for Los Angeles, so a lot of money is still coming into the city, but the contracts that you mentioned, which a couple years ago were negotiated and ended up being passed by the council, those brought significant increases in spending. Benefits are much higher than what the typical private sector employee makes. But the issue here too is that councilmembers are typically backed by unions with whom they then are approving the raises of, as part of the union contracts.

So I wanna know from you, as someone who has been backed by organized labor: to what extent are you willing to push back on the demands of organized labor because of cost concerns for the city? Not because the demands are illegitimate, but because of the reality of what the city's budget looks like?

Raman: Absolutely. And I will say I wasn't backed by organized labor in my first race, and I wasn't backed by the Federation of Labor in my last race. And in this race I have, I think, almost no organized labor support. Um, I will say that my husband's a union member. I really believe in unions. I really believe in the power of workers here in Los Angeles.

I think it's really, really important, but I also think it's really important for us to be able to have an honest conversation about the facts that are in front of us. How do we actually negotiate over the future of Los Angeles and the future of services in a way that benefits all Angelenos, including our workforce?

And I think that conversation can be hard to have when the power of political spending is so large. I have proven in the past to be able to push back against even my allies, and be an independent voice on council. I've pushed back against things that I supported previously, like measure ULA.

 
Mantle: The so called “mansion tax.”

Raman: The mansion tax, yeah, which I supported and I still think is an important revenue source. It was backed by a lot of people that also supported me in my reelection. I advocated for it. I endorsed it. I phone banked for it.

And I was really excited for it. It gave us the first revenue source for affordable housing construction and eviction defense that the city had access to that's gonna be sustainable into the future. I also see that this measure has had real negative impacts according to every data source that I've seen on new housing production here in L.A. and I was the only councilmember that stood up and said, against significant pushback from many of the people who backed to ULA that we need to reform it.

We need to exempt new multifamily construction. I took a lot of heat for that and I think that's just one of a few different instances where I have been able to stand up and be that independent voice and look at the data and really try and legislate on behalf of the entire city.

Rent control and rent stabilization

Mantle: Let's continue on data with housing.

We're talking with Nithya Raman, Los Angeles City Council member, candidate for mayor of L.A. We're coming your way from Ahmanson Auditorium, the campus of LMU in Westchester.

One of the things we hear from even economists on the left is that rent control is great for the people already housed. Who run the risk of not being able to afford their rent and being evicted. It's not good for construction of additional housing units. It depresses the market, so you have the lucky people that are there when other people lose. There are also significant numbers of people who are in rental units who could have afforded to see their rent go up and could pay market rate, but this sort of a blunt instrument to help the people who couldn't as rents accelerate.

Do you still support rent control in its current form in the city of Los Angeles? Do you think it should be modified? Do you think rent control is counterproductive?

Raman: I have been very supportive of our rent stabilization ordinance here in the city of Los Angeles. I've tried to improve it. I've tried to make it so that some of our rental increases that were allowable under that ordinance actually went down, because there were very, very high increases that could have been charged through that ordinance.

Here in L.A. and in across cities in California, one interesting thing is that we cannot apply rent stabilization or rent control to new units. In fact, you can't apply these rules to any units that are built after 1978. So this kind of push and pull between wanting to make sure that renters who are really, really struggling in Los Angeles right now have protections in these rent stabilized units and ensuring that you have new production happening - that push and pull does not really exist here in this city because new construction is exempt from rent stabilization.

I think we have to make sure that any kind of expansion of rent stabilization or rent control doesn't impact new construction. I think that could happen with another exemption for the first 15 years or 20 years. I think there's ways to design those policies so that you can both protect renters and ensure that new construction happens.

And I feel like good policy making is really supposed to be designed to drive the best outcomes all around. And I think that we can thread that needle. I'm confident that we can.

Handling homelessness

Mantle: Councilmember Raman. Let's talk about homelessness in Los Angeles. I mentioned Mayor Bass proposing that her Inside Safe program continue to be funded at its current level.

We have seen a churn go on there.

Raman: Yeah.

Mantle: As happens with almost any program for providing housing to people who've been living on the streets. As you look at Inside Safe, what, if any, modifications would you make of it if you’re elected mayor?

Raman: So Inside Safe is a program that is designed around something called Encampment Resolution, which is where you go to an encampment and you offer housing and shelter to everybody at that encampment and then bring them indoors at once.

This is actually something that I had done in my district before Mayor Bass was elected.

So I think anything that we do here in the city of Los Angeles should include a stock of shelter that can be used for effective encampment resolution.

But I think that investment can be smaller than what we are putting into Inside Safe right now. Right now, the average motel room in the Inside Safe Program costs over $80,000 a year, and data shows that people are staying in those rooms on average of a year, which is a very, very expensive intervention.

The data that I produce through the work that I've done in the housing and homelessness committee shows that investments like short-term rental subsidies, or the time-limited subsidy voucher program can help house two or three apartments for the same cost as we're paying for a single motel room, and have case management attached to it and has significantly better outcomes, much larger numbers of people actually going on to stay in housing and being permanently housed.

The city of Los Angeles invests in about 8,000 shelter beds across a variety of interventions. Mental health services are desperately needed for people.

I know the need, I know the people who are going into these shelter sites. It's a very, very large need, and I found after significant pushing that only about 4% of people across our shelter sites were even getting access to mental health services from L.A. County. I think is a huge, huge gap. I wanna make sure that we're advocating for more from L.A. County, but also funding street medicine teams across the entire city that can be reimbursed through Medi-Cal. We wouldn't have to pay the full cost for it and providing those services both on the street, following those people into shelter, and making sure that people have access to those resources.

Mantle: Councilmember, this is perhaps beyond what a mayor would be capable of doing. But as you know, there's tremendous shortage of mental health personnel. There's a very high churn rate, a high burnout rate for those who are providing that service. So you could demand of L.A. County that they provide more of it, but that doesn't mean they'll have more people available to do it.

Raman: Yeah, and that's why in the gap, until L.A. County can really step up and provide those services, in my own district, I funded a street medicine team that's able to provide those resources right on the streets. I've watched as people have delivered injections of antipsychotics to people right on the street, help them stabilize and overtime help them move indoors into appropriate settings.

They can refer people into mental health beds, they can refer people into acute care beds. They have the ability to provide treatment. It is a resource that we should be using citywide. And like I said, the city does not have to fund the full cost because. Much of it can be reimbursed through Medi-Cal. So it's a much smaller investment that can generate huge resources, and that is absolutely within the purview of the mayor's office to be able to do.

Mantle: We're talking with Los Angeles City Council member and candidate for Mayor Nithya Raman.

Do you support forcibly removing people from the streets if there is a place for them to go, if they refuse or if they go back to a place on the street after having been in a shelter?

Raman: I think there are different kinds of forcible removal.

There are people who are deeply, deeply sick. I have actually worked with individuals who are in my district who have required involuntary conservatorship. And it's a long pathway,

Mantle: I was gonna say, that's a long process.

Raman: That's a long pathway, but it's definitely a pathway that is required for individuals who are on the street.

It's a small number, and it is a long pathway, but I do think it's an important pathway for us to be able to work towards and for, for some individuals who need that level of care.

Mantle: But short of that, would you support law enforcement moving people off the street?

Raman: We have had to move people from high fire risk zones.

I manage Griffith Park and people are not allowed to camp in parks, and those are rules that are in place for a reason. You know, these are rules that are important for us to be able to enforce. I do think though, that you are not going to be able to move people indoors and off the streets unless you can provide shelter and services.

You have to combine regulation with shelter and services in order to actually reduce homelessness on the ground. And that's exactly the approach that I've followed in my district over and over again, and seen real results.

Picking a police chief

Mantle: Councilmember Raman, let's talk about law enforcement. Arguably the biggest clout a Los Angeles mayor has is in selecting the police chief, subject to council approval. Having the leverage with the LAPD and the police chief that, under the charter reform, the last time that the city went through this, gave the mayor extended powers.

We've had hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts, claims against LAPD practices. So if you were hiring the next LAPD chief, what would be the most important characteristic for that individual, uh, to leave the department?

Raman: I think the next LAPD chief has to have courage. I think that's a really important trait for that individual to have. They'll have to have courage to be able to make sure that they are pushing the department to reduce liabilities, to improve responses to protests, to improve their engagement with ICE. So many people on the streets fear that LAPD is actively collaborating with ICE or giving the appearance of collaboration with ICE, which right now —

Mantle: Do you think that's true?

Raman: I don't think so. But even giving the appearance of collaboration with ICE, I think is a terrifying prospect for Angelenos, and I think we have to be able to push the department, audit the department as our sanctuary city policies say, and make sure that no data is being shared with ICE, that they're not actually engaging with ICE in ways that are harming people who are on the streets, that are actually potentially putting people who are on the streets of Los Angeles out there protesting, or people who are immigrants, who are undocumented at risk.

Like we cannot have our law enforcement be engaged in activities that are putting Angelenos at risk. And I think that's a really, really important characteristic. That we have to be pushing for in our next police chief. That they know who they are out to keep safe.

Mantle: And as you look at Jim McDonnell, the current chief and the job he's done, what would be your critique of his performance in the role?

Raman: You know, I think that his response to some of these protests, his response to requests for mutual aid with from federal law enforcement, his response to the mask ban, the state mask ban, saying that he wouldn't enforce it, have led a lot of Angelenos, including myself, to feel like he is not meeting this moment. I think I would be really pushing for a police chief who could meet this moment.

Mantle: You really think that a chief for the LAPD would direct her or his officers to confront federal law enforcement officers over wearing face coverings, would you expect that to happen?

Raman: You know, I think that even if it was difficult to enforce that, even if it was hard to enforce laws that are designed to keep us safe locally, I think it's important for that police chief to express real empathy for the reasons why those laws were put in place and to make sure that he or she was implementing that rule to the fullest that they were able to while keeping their officers safe and while keeping Angelenos safe, I think there's no question in my mind that in response to that kind of moment, the police chief should be responding with empathy for the fears that Angelenos have for being kidnapped by masked federal law enforcement agents on our street.

City service delivery

Mantle: Councilmember Raman, we're getting very tight on time, but I wanted to ask you about city services.

L.A.'s neighbors typically provide faster police response. Their streets are generally cleaner, their potholes are filled more promptly. So how do you see this? Why do you think L.A. doesn't deliver on services as well as its neighbors?

Raman: I think we need to do a lot more to hold our departments accountable and our department heads accountable.

The mayor's power is to hire and fire department heads and to make sure that we have metrics in place that are holding our staff and our department heads accountable for delivering services. And I would wanna use those powers to ensure that we were actually doing that. We need data about what kind of requests are coming in, how quickly they're being filled and responded to, and if they're not being responded to with the speed and the responsiveness that Angelenos deserve.

I think we need to be replacing our leadership and making sure that they're pushing on these outcomes.

Mantle: Well, I don't know if other cities are doing that or not, but is this at all a cultural issue within the workforce in the city of L.A.? And I don't mean to be painting with a broad brush and we know many fine L.A. city employees who do great work.

Raman: Yes. I love our city workforce. I think there's two issues that are happening that are parallel to each other, that are leading to some of the service gaps that we're seeing.

First, is that we don't have a real capital infrastructure plan that goes multiple years into the future that we are budgeting with. Which means —

Mantle: How could that be?

Raman: It's just never been the case here in Los Angeles. I'm hoping that through the charter —

Mantle: There's no capital infrastructure plan for, say, the next three to five years?

Raman: Not a robust one. And even for things like fixing a pool in my district that requires immediate repairs, I have to do the advocacy to make sure that it gets into the budget every year instead of it being part of our repair process in the city. It just doesn't make any sense.

And so putting a real capital infrastructure plan in place that is targeting the poor quality of roads, that is targeting sidewalks, that's making sure that we have the investments that we need in order to actually maintain our infrastructure at the level that Angelenos deserve. That's a key intervention that I don't just wanna talk about, I wanna implement.

But the second issue is that when you don't have real metrics in departments, when you don't have clarity about what outcomes you're delivering on in terms of service delivery, it's not just that you can't hold departments accountable for those outcomes, you also can't reward our incredible city workforce.

Mantle: So everybody gets treated the same?

Raman: Everyone gets treated the same —

Mantle: Whether doing a fantastic job or mailing it in?

Raman: Exactly. And I think that kind of approach, a management approach, to departments that's really looking at what your expectations are from each department. Who is delivering and ensuring that we're using technology and data to make sure that we are actually rewarding the departments and workers that are doing well and ensuring that we're addressing problems that are coming up?

That's a big change that does need to happen, and that change needs to be driven from the top.

What makes her uniquely suited for the job

Mantle: Final question. I'm asking this of all of the candidates, and it's, what is it about you as a person — I'm not talking about your experiences in the jobs you've held or in public office or about your educational background — but you personally, the way you're wired, the way you think about things, your intellect, your personality. What is it that you think makes the job of mayor suited to you?

Raman: That's a great question. You know, I am a very hard worker. I'm a really, really hard worker. And I think this city at this moment has so many challenges that are longstanding, that require untangling of bureaucratic messes that require engagement with longstanding — legal cases that prevent us from being able to do things the right way or the fastest way.

What our problems right now require is work, real hard work, and I feel like I bring that to the table more than almost anyone else. And if I'm elected mayor, it will be the highest honor of my life to work hard for Angelenos.

Mantle: Thank you Councilmember Raman.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar.