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Déjà vu All Over Again: DONE Off on Another NC Witch Hunt |
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NC Watch
By Greg Nelson
The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment has struggled for some time to determine what its primary role should be. Now it seems that a decision has been made, and you aren’t going to like it.
 For the last few years, the choices have been either what the
Neighborhood Council Review Commission recommended -- a department that
“is facilitative and supportive to neighborhood councils” -- or a
department with the primarily focus on being “enforcers.”
Given that there is no other agency within city government that is
dedicated to nurturing, supporting, and leading the charge for
neighborhood councils, the NCRC’s recommendation seemed to be pretty
much a no-brainer.
For the most part, DONE’s field staff is comprised of dedicated and well-intentioned people who want to earn the respect of the neighborhood councils, to be their trusted advisors, to try and keep them out of trouble, and to help them be the best that they can be.
A couple of years ago, neighborhood councils thought they had survived a behind-closed-doors witch-hunt attack from a previous DONE administration.
It arose when the proposal to allow neighborhoods councils to create official City Council files first reached the City Council. With no neighborhood council involvement, DONE prepared a list of unsubstantiated “misbehaviors” by neighborhood councils in what some described as an attempt to discredit neighborhood councils and scuttle the empowerment movement.
The examples were roundly condemned by neighborhood councils and the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners.
Today, the neighborhood council file issue still lingers, and as you have read in CityWatch some City Council members who aren’t fans of neighborhood councils have been trying to attach a provision to the proposal that would require all neighborhood council board members to fill out conflict of interest statements very similar to those required of city elected officials and commissioners.
Last Friday, DONE’s Senior Project Coordinator Jon Martinez, sent an e-mail message to the field staff about the “extremely hot issue” of financial disclosure.
The directive was for each field staffer to develop “a list of 5 to 10 examples of conflicts of interest that you’ve witnessed or that you have been made aware of in the last year or two.” The deadline was Monday, one working day later, and after the deadline for this issue.
It was explained that the goal is to provide “a picture to the BONC [Board of Neighborhood Commissioners] and City Council.”
Martinez even recognized how difficult the task would be “due to the lack of tracking and the manner in which a conflict is determined to exist.”
There are so many things wrong with this that it’s hard to know where to begin.
Asking DONE’s field staff to begin ratting out their assigned neighborhood councils will likely make it impossible for them to establish or retain the level of trust they will need to work closely the councils in a positive way.
Martinez said that an example of what he’s looking for would be a situation in which a board member was advised not to participate in a vote by his/her neighborhood council, but did so anyway.
Martinez said that he would separately work on gathering such examples from the Office of the City Attorney.
It is important to understand that such advice from the City Attorney to a board member, just like advice to a City Council member or commissioner is private and confidential. And it is just advice, and doesn’t always mean that a conflict exists. Sometimes the City Attorney wishes people to play it safe and conservative.
If advice that has been ignored by neighborhood council board members is to be made public, then so to should similar advice that has been ignored by City Council members and commissioners. Even the DONE and the BONC.
It’s far more important to have a clearer picture about conflicts of interest among the city’s decision-makers than it is among those who just advise.
The fact that DONE staff doesn’t even appear to understand what constitutes a conflict of interest, and the fact that it hasn’t been keeping records of such things, makes it highly likely that the finished product will be badly flawed and misused … as it was during the last DONE witch-hunt … by those want to keep neighborhood councils in their place.
The result will be a list that appears to charge people with conflicts of interest where none actually exist. It’s a tactic straight out of Senator Joe McCarthy’s playbook.
Reading between the lines of the message, it seems clearly possible that someone has asked DONE for ammunition with which to attack neighborhood councils. If DONE produces it, legitimacy will have been added to it.
Instead, DONE should be honest about the fact that it hasn’t kept records about possible conflicts of interest, that it isn’t clear about what constitutes a conflict, and advice that the Office of City Attorney gives to board members is confidential.
DONE should then convene a task force of neighborhood council leaders and city officials to work on bringing clarity to the issue.
At the same time, DONE should declare itself the world’s strongest supporters of empowering neighborhood councils even if it means standing up to a City Council member of two who are trying to enlist DONE’s help in torturing neighborhood councils.
It’s no secret that neighborhood councils don’t have many friends among the city’s elected officials. From time-to-time, the councils have been able to round up support and make noise effectively. This is one of those times. The best way to end the bullying is to stand up to the bullies.
(Read the DONE Conflicts of Interest Memo here.)
You may want to send your thoughts on this issue to: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at
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; Councilman Richard Alarcon (Chairman of the Education and Neighborhoods Committee) at
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;The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners through
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; BongHwan Kim (General Manager, Department of Neighborhood Empowerment) at
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; CityWatch at
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or Greg Nelson at
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; And friends you know who care about this kind of effort to aid the City as opposed to neighborhood councils.) ◘
CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 75
Pub: Sept 16, 2008
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