Neighborhood Councils: City Commission Tries Again to Tell Us How to Behave

GELFAND’S WORLD-The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC) is about to consider its latest version of a code of conduct for neighborhood council board members. It's less invasive and abusive than previous versions, but it simultaneously goes too far and not far enough. The most serious objection to the latest draft is that it gives the city the power to undue the lawful election of a board member. 

Even if this were justifiable on some rare occasion, the policy as written has several weaknesses, not the least being the failure to establish the most elementary sort of due process rights for the accused. 

Another serious weakness is the failure to be more clear about protecting the public, rather than just the elected board members. 

The proposed policy has been widely communicated by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE). This is much to its credit, and a substantial improvement over the way previous administrations generally left us in the dark until policies were already installed. You can find it here. 

You can skip the long list of whereases, numbering one through eight in all. They serve merely to fill up a page. They slightly resemble the lists of findings that legislators attach to bad bills in order to justify doing the unjustifiable. Here is one of the whereases, just to give you the flavor: 

WHEREAS,this Commission and others believe Neighborhood Council Board Members should be aware of other types of behavior such as sexual harassment, sexual, gender and age discrimination, “bullying,” work place violence and other related conduct because it will help minimize improper conduct by making Neighborhood Council members aware of the harm that results from it; 

Now it would seem to me that the intent should not be to make board members aware of certain types of behavior such as sexual harassment, but to stop them. The paragraph continues on in this vein, explaining that the intent is to make board members aware of the harm that results from bad conduct. This might be an appropriate description for the reason to teach three year olds about the difference between right and wrong. It doesn't have a lot to do with the administration of adult organizations. I mean, if you have to explain the golden rule at this level, you've got a much bigger problem than this policy document is able to solve. 

But enough with the whereases. Suffice it to explain that if the BONC is already this confused, and we're only into the sixth paragraph, then perhaps this draft needs some careful rethinking. 

Let's just take one more paragraph in the opening section, once again to reveal some slightly confused thinking: 

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners establishes this policy to inform Neighborhood Council members of that type of conduct which this Commission and others deem harmful to the Neighborhood Council system. 

Uh, no. The BONC is going a lot further than informing. As we shall see, it is planning to establish a new kind of power over elected neighborhood council board members, one that has not previously been granted to DONE. We need to remember that DONE is, after all, merely a city agency and not a judiciary body. The proposed policy gives DONE the authority to mandate as yet unspecified training on governing board members should it so decide. The policy also would give DONE the right to kick people off of governing boards. There's a grand old American principle called due process, and this policy ignores it completely. 

We might want to remind ourselves that neighborhood councils were conceived of as independent political bodies whose fundamental purpose is to fight city hall. The government isn't happy about this. We all understand that the government and its agencies, to the extent that they tolerate neighborhood councils at all, wish them be at most a support arm of city government, beholden to the higher ranking elected officials. 

When you get into the policy statement itself, there are a couple of items that jump out at you. The first is that under the new policy, every neighborhood council governing board member will be required to sign the policy statement. Ordinarily, this would be the best and most obvious use of BONC's policy setting authority. Just give them the policy statement, and require that they confirm that they have received it. That would be consistent with lots of other organizations, public and private, that are satisfied to have proof that you at least were handed a copy of the policy. 

But this proposal goes a step farther, and it's a step that bothers me: 

I have read and understand the Neighborhood Council Board Member Code of Conduct. I agree to abide by the Code of Conduct and understand that if I violate the Code of Conduct, I may be required to take additional trainings or subject to additional actions, up to and including, suspension and/or removal from my Neighborhood Council Board. 

It's essentially an abrogation of all of one's personal and political rights. Not only do you have to acknowledge that you are aware of the policy that is being imposed from above, you also have to agree to that policy. And then, you have to accept any punishment that is handed down to you should some bureaucrat decide that your interpretation of the policy does not agree with DONE's interpretation. The paragraph would be acceptable were it to include only the first sentence. Every sentence after that one gets into dangerous ground. 

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{module [862]} {module [662]} 

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Notice, by the way, that the imposed training and potential additional punishments are not set forth in the policy statement. It is essentially a carte blanche to be handed to some future DONE administration. We've seen bad DONE administrations before, and we don't want to be careless about the level of power we hand the next one. 

What's the harm, you might ask, if the rest of the policy described in this document is benign? For example, the proposed policy forbids the making of threats to your fellow board members, either by word or by deed. I doubt that anybody would object to that part. 

But the draft proposal goes too far, by creating what is essentially a thought crime and giving DONE the power to punish you for engaging in it. Let's consider: 

Neighborhood Council Board Members should treat other Board Members and members of the public with respect regardless of the other’s opinion, ethnicity, race, sexuality or sexual choice, age, disability or religion. 

It's that part about respecting other board members regardless of their opinions that worries me. As I mentioned in a previous column, that's where I draw the line. Suppose your fellow board member continually makes misogynistic or homophobic remarks. Are you required to respect those views? What level or kind of response are you allowed to make under the new policy rules? 

Let's take a more timely issue -- what are the rules regarding responses to comments about the war in Gaza? Who decides whether somebody speaking about Israeli policy is failing to respect the religion of somebody else on the board? I bring up this particularly contentious argument simply because it is such a perfect example of how hard it can be to make a distinction between religion and non-religious politics. 

We shouldn't have to keep repeating the following point, but apparently its necessary: Our nation's founders made a decision about how to deal with contentious and sometimes painful utterances in the public sphere. They called their policy freedom of speech, and wrote it into the Constitution. Somehow the BONC figures that it can rewrite the freedom of speech part, replacing it with the requirement for respect. 

Let me take one more swing at this BONC misunderstanding of that term "respect." I don't think they really mean "respect" at all. They can't possibly be expecting all the rest of us to be mind readers. And respect, after all, is a quality of inner thought. I might respect you but not show it, or I might entirely fail to respect you, but pretend. 

I think that the BONC and so many others are mistaking the term "respect" for nothing more than courteous behavior. If someone wants to defend the policy of Jim Crow (which I've seen happen), I refuse to respect that position either in word, or facial expression, or in speech. I would feel a moral obligation to disagree openly. I would feel the obligation to express my moral distaste for that point of view. 

And why shouldn't I? But the proposed policy says that I have to respect that point of view, even when it is spoken directly to me. 

Perhaps the BONC could replace the paragraph with something a little better thought through, perhaps something that simply forbids bullying talk, or threatening talk, whether in response to others' comments or by itself. But notice we already have that paragraph. 

There is one other point to be made about this oddly written paragraph on respect, the one I have quoted above. Notice that it limits disrespect based on a limited set of personal attributes. You must respect people for their "opinion, ethnicity, race, sexuality or sexual choice, age, disability or religion." 

Ignoring the opinion category, this is simply a list concocted for the politically liberal. It seems to have forgotten about protecting those who have a history of military service, or those who have conservative views. On the other hand, we seem to have omitted protecting those who have served time in prison, those who live in halfway houses or sober living facilities, and those who own dangerous pets. 

I mentioned that the proposed policy actually doesn't go far enough at one point. I invite you to look at the definitions of bullying and of harassment. Notice that the bad behavior has to be exerted against a governing board member. The definitions do not assert a similar protection for members of the public. 

I could go on, but let's simply point out that the BONC should take this proposed policy and lay it on the table at least temporarily, so that regional groups and citywide groups can go over it with the proverbial fine toothed comb. After all, it's the members of these groups who will have to live with the consequences of an ill-defined policy, just as we have had to live with the weaknesses of the Charter language that brought this whole system into existence. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 67

Pub: Aug 19, 2014