OurLA, by Greg Nelson, Former Neighborhood Empowerment GM
Thursday, 28 January 2010

One of two things is about to happen.  Maybe both.

One, city hall must make some severe changes in the way it operates and provides services.

Two, the city must declare bankruptcy and argue its case to a judge.

Either way, this is an important opportunity for neighborhood councils to become a valued part of the process.

Responding to the mayor’s budget challenge doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the real challenge that faces city hall.  And the challenge doesn’t even, as it used to, ask neighborhood councils to put the survey on its agendas, discuss the questions, and response as a council.

Without the kind of access to city staff enjoyed by City Council members, neighborhood councils find themselves at a disadvantage.  Remember when Mayor Jim Hahn wanted general managers to meet quarterly with neighborhood councils?

This fiscal crisis provides neighborhood councils with an opportunity to gain credibility, but not if they adopt recommendations that are based on rumors, urban myths, and bad information.

Therefore, I offer two suggestions.

One, before the councils adopt any recommendation, it should be presented to the CAO or someone in City Hall who can comment on its validity.

Two, neighborhood councils should agree upon a set of questions they want answered by city hall before any recommendation is adopted.

Here are a few questions that should be asked.

TO THE MAYOR:

1.  Why does the budget survey encourage only individuals to respond, and not, as it used to, place the main focus on encouraging neighborhood council boards to discuss and respond to the questions?

2.  What is happening to the comments and suggestions that people submitted as part of the survey?

3.  Even at this late date, will the mayor respond to the recommendations made by the neighborhood council budget representatives early in 2009?
4.  Using the example set by President Obama’s Open Government Directive, can a determination be made which data sets of city services and statistics can be released to the public?

5.  President Obama’s Open Government Directive contains many ideas that apply to municipalities.  Which of them is the city willing to pursue?

6.  Would you be willing to fill the next vacancy on the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System’s Board of Administration, and the Board of Fire and Police Pension Commissioners with someone from a list provided to you by the neighborhood council members of people with financial expertise?

TO COUNCILMEMBERS ERIC GARCETTI AND BERNARD PARKS:

1.  Will official representatives of a neighborhood council or an alliance of neighborhood councils be given adequate time during public hearings to present and explain their concerns and suggestions?

2.  The City Council members agreed to take a 10% cut in the current budget, but are members still allowed to transfer unused funds from their General City Purposes accounts to their salaries account at the end of the fiscal year?  If yes, will they still be allowed to do so at the end of this fiscal year?

3.  Would you propose a City Council rule that would require elected officials to post on the Internet how they spend their discretionary funds as is the case with neighborhood councils?

TO THE MAYOR AND CAO:

1.  What are the reasons why Los Angeles, unlike other municipalities, doesn’t prepare balanced budgets 2-5 years in advance so that elected officials are assured of understanding the financial effects of their actions?

2.  If it’s possibly a good idea to seek private operators for the Van Nuys and Ontario Airports, why isn’t it a good idea to do the same for LAX?  Legally, what is need to sell or lease the operations of any of our airports?

3.  Is it true that Los Angeles is one of the few municipalities in the nation to still use sworn personnel to staff the 911 system?  What are the pros and cons of using only civilians?

4.  How carefully does City Hall scrutinize and review contracts entered into by city agencies?

5.  In order to help eliminate the “spend it or lose it” mentality that drives many city agencies, what are the pros and cons of adopting a policy through which a city agency that finds ways to save money on a one-time basis, the agencies should be able to “rollover” a portion of unexpected savings they generate, with the rest going to the General Fund.

6.  Faced with layoffs years ago, the employee investigations unit of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management formed their own corporation and sold their services back to the federal government.  It saved the taxpayers’ money and became a big moneymaker (gross revenues near $80 million) for the employees.  What are the pros and cons of city employee groups doing the same?

7.  What are the pros and cons of outsourcing trash collection?

8.  What are the pros and cons of switching from a fiscal year to a calendar year?

9.  Which city agency consolidations are worth discussing?

TO THE MAYOR, CAO, AND CITY ATTORNEY:

1.  What are the pros and cons of resuming consideration of a past CAO risk manager’s suggestion that the city consider a “portfolio transfer” through which the city would sell all of its outstanding and future workers’ compensation claims to a private insurance company (or companies) that would run the program?  Workers would be ensured of a high quality of service because of the standards set by the state.  The city’s costs would be fixed and known.  Future liability costs would be paid by the insurer.

TO THE MAYOR, CAO, AND PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT:

1.  There are 125 positions in the Personnel Department at an annual cost of over $29 million who run the workers’ compensation program for civilian employees.  A Third Party Administrator runs the program for the sworn personnel at an annual cost of $11 million.  Payouts for claims are over $100 million.  Shouldn’t the program for both sworn and civilian employees by run one way or the other?

TO COUNCILMEMBERS ERIC GARCETTI AND BERNARD PARKS AND THE MAYOR:

1.  Have the National League of Cities and the California League of Cities been asked if they have a list of creative ways that other cities have addresses their fiscal crises?

2.  Why not form a joint labor-management-neighborhood council task force to begin exploring ways to infuse performance/merit into the process that decides who gets laid off and who gets promoted?  An example would be a “360” system used by the EPA office in San Francisco, and the private sector?

3.  Can the city renew the research it was doing for Councilman Garcetti into the  possibility of selling selected sponsorship rights to the private sector, and include neighborhood council members this time?

4.  The Administrative Code requires city employees (excluding elected officials) who travel using city money to file a report on what they did AND what they learned.  Have you been reviewing those reports to help determine which trips are defensible, and will you support an ordinance that would impose the same requirement on elected officials?  If not, why not?

TO THE CITY CONTROLLER:

1.  Of the recommendations made in past audits that would impact the city’s budget by $5,000,000 or more, which ones remain unacted upon?

TO THE MAYOR, CAO, AND DEPARTMENT OF BUILDING AND SAFETY, AND PLANNING DEPARTMENT:

1.  In order to provide an incentive for people to come to City Hall with their requests for permits in order, what are the pros and cons of charging permit fees by the hour.

TO THE MAYOR AND PLANNING DEPARTMENT:

1.  How many more people should Los Angeles hold?

2.  What are the arguments for continuing to promote the creation of more housing without also providing for more sewers, more parking, more transit, more teachers, and the other infrastructure that is needed to support the new residents?

3.  Do we have an infrastructure plan?

(Greg Nelson is the former general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment)