NEIGHBORHOODS - [Spoiler Alert: For those looking for yet another treatise on whether or not “factual basis” stakeholders are good for the City’s NC system – sorry, this isn’t really that.]
In a matter of just a few recent weeks . . .
● The Education & Neighborhoods Committee chair, Councilmember Bernard Parks held a quartet of “town hall” open hearings around L.A. to discuss the state of its neighborhood council system. A repeated question from Parks to NC board members attending those went like this. “How many stakeholders attend your meetings?” Often as not the answer was “only a handful” or simply, “none.”
● A committee of the City’s Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC) continues work on a comprehensive citywide publicity and outreach campaign intended to “increase stakeholder participation in the NC system.”
● The full “BONC” seeks ongoing input Citywide on a set of “standards” for NCs that include – from the 1999 City Charter – NCs allowing “ . . . every stakeholder to participate in the conduct of business, deliberation and decision‐making.” [Charter Sec. 906(a)(6)].
Meanwhile downtown, as if unaffected by all these efforts to stem the outbreak of this growing lack-of-participation virus, a tag-team of staff members of DONE (Department of Neighborhood Empowerment) and deputy City Attorneys has been working hard to heavily revise the bylaws of a neighborhood council placed in, for whatever reasons, “exhaustive efforts” (a kind of DONE-imposed “martial law”). At the center of many of the revisions is an effort to minimize or completely remove any real, concrete role for “stakeholders” (the people most often missing from the equation, if the concerns of those City committees and commissions are correct).
The City’s next task (any day now) will be to deftly inform the same NC’s board -- as they have with a number of others recently -- that their existing bylaws, although approved repeatedly by DONE in recent years, are now suddenly “not in compliance” with the City’s prevailing rules for NC operation. Most noticeably removed from the new “compliant” version will be virtually all “checks and balances” stakeholders previously had against the NC board misusing or abusing its advisory powers. Those “membership oversight” sections included such inherently democratic tools used to keep elected official accountable as: being able to file a grievance against the board (and have it be decided by impartial third parties); initiating agenda items -- if the board has chosen to ignore a community concern; the ability to overturn unpopular decisions by the board through a formal referendum; or even the right of people to “recall” board members who were voting contrary to the neighborhood’s best interest (something possible with every other “elected official” in L.A.).
. . . imagine, if you will, the U.S. government similarly redrafting our Constitution to remove that messy and often troublesome part called the “Bill of Rights.”
“Sorry,” explains a deputy City Attorney in more diplomatic terms than this, but it seems that in the new, “uniform” world of City NCs, there’s really no place – or need -- for that already endangered species known as the stakeholder.
Except, perhaps, during two minutes of “public comment” – just like at City Council.
Instead, the only thing that matters to the City is what the handful of loosely elected (and now virtually untouchable) board members “say” the neighborhood wants – at least until the next under-publicized NC election, every two or more years.
So whatever became of that “stakeholder” anyway? What happened to the “cultural change” called for by the late-1990s Neighborhood Council Review Commission -- that NCs be overwhelmingly “stakeholder-driven” and not simply board-ruled. That sentiment was also preached as “gospel” by several previous DONE general managers.
Once seen, at least, as advisers to the “advisors to City government” (NCs) the everyday stakeholder seems now destined to be legislated out, or at least down to a place one more rung lower, and further away from the decisions of City Hall. And, oddly, they’ll be relegated there by the very movement (called “neighborhood empowerment”) that was created to “bring them closer” to that same local government.
Not too long ago, the chupacabra of the NC system – the “factual basis” stakeholder – was a scare that had many NCs citywide fearful of stakeholder rights being watered down by the less-invested.
Worry no more . . . in the interest of fairness, ALL real stakeholder rights and roles – between elections -- are in the process of being revoked by City Attorney fiat (not just watered down). Now shouldn’t we all feel better?
If this hasn’t much affected your neighborhood council -- or its now non-essential stakeholders -- give it some time. Some NCs have accepted the many changes – without question. (That’s easy to understand, since in many cases, the board asked to approve the changes probably feels more “empowered” by being able to remove any real incentive they once had to have to listen to stakeholders. Shortsightedly, however, they may not realize that at some point we all return to being “just” a stakeholder.
A handful of other NCs, like the one referenced earlier – have been swept up in that rolling blackout of board authority known as “exhaustive efforts.” There they’ve become the guinea pigs of opportunistic City officials looking to re-create NCs in some all-must-fit-one-size uniformity.
And some NCs may just not have realized what hit them, or is about to, when the required, but seemingly harmless, “reordering” of bylaws was taken over by DONE because they failed to react in time.
Finally then, any changes a few remaining holdout NCs try to take that involve stakeholder-instigated actions (bylaws amendments, boundary adjustments, etc.) will quickly lead to a DONE or City Attorney “discovery” that they, also, need to come in for new bylaws “fitting.”. (“No, the pants aren’t too long . . . you’re just too short.”).
Perhaps well-meaning, the move to revise NC bylaws by making them more “uniform” has become the most recent push to take NCs further down the well-traveled road of any truly democratic “vision” that ends up being administered by a bureaucracy – the road where the “rules” take over and “form” replaces any intended function.
And one end result -- like vegans repeatedly invited to their neighbor’s barbequed pig roast – will see regular stakeholders, though newly “invited” to attend meetings (by BONC’s campaign, DONE, and the NCs) even less willing to attend meetings where they have no real role, and no way to adapt the “menu” to meet their actual needs.
Because it’s now ALL about the board; stakeholders will understand even more so that there’s no point in being there.
(But, just to be sure -- will someone please see that that’s appropriately posted in five places).
(Joseph Riser is a stakeholder in three neighborhood councils who regularly advocates for the rights of non-boardmember stakeholders. He can be reached at: [email protected]) -cw
Tags: Neighborhood Councils, Los Angeles, stakeholders, board members, DONE, BONC, City Hall
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 37
Pub: May 8, 2012